purple motes

The FCC's pioneering recreational band, Hot Spectrum, made its club debut this past Tuesday night at Bangkok Blues. As the above video reports, its repertoire is diverse, but familiar tunes are easily recognized. Government regulators often are subject to harsh criticism. But in this case, a large and enthusiastic crowd cheered on the band. Please, let there be love, even for government regulators!

Note: If the above video keeps stopping and starting, try clicking on the stop button on the player and give it a minute to get ahead on the downloading. Alternatively, the Youtube version seems to play more continuously, but the video quality is lower.

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I passed my National Federation of State High School Associations' examination for basketball officials. That makes me a registered Virginia High School League basketball official. Part of the skill of officiating is being able to take abuse from fans, players, coaches, and owners, and still make good calls and just enforce the rules. Looking forward to additional regulatory practice.

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Government printing jobs have contributed significantly to the development of the printing industry. In North America from 1640 to 1790, printed government documents probably accounted for about 30% of printed documents considered to have enduring significance. In the U.S. at the end of the twentieth century, the number of titles that the Government Printing Office issued was equal to about a quarter of the total number of new books and new editions that other printers published. Other countries have probably had an even higher share of government publications. Government printing contracts are typically highly sought for the stable and predictable demand they provide. In addition, government documents have had a distinctive role in the evolution of copyright.[1]

Like print communication about government proceedings, video communication about government proceedings is intimately related to the functioning of democracy. In a letter to U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Carl Malamud stated:

Based on 25 years of experience in the field of computer networking and a 2-year investigation of this specific issue, I have absolutely no doubt that it is technically and financially feasible for the U.S. Congress to provide a permanent broadcast-quality video record of proceedings and hearings for download on the Internet. Technically speaking, this is a “no-brainer.” This is simply a matter of will.

Adopting a goal that by the end of the 110th Congress, the U.S. House of Representatives will offer broadcast-quality video of the floor and all hearings for download on the Internet is a reachable goal and one that will set a standard for transparency and openness. Your leadership in embracing this goal would set an example for all branches of the federal government, indeed for all governments here and abroad. If a hearing is to be considered truly public, the public has to be able to see it, both now and forever. I encourage you to adopt this standard as a goal for the 110th Congress.

The Government Printing Office (letter) and C-SPAN (press release) (after some controversy) have recognized the democratic importance of making video of government proceedings more widely available. E-government initiatives have tended to focus on information provision and electronic transactions. Video is not necessary for either. Video, however, is a powerful mode for attracting attention and creating a sense of personal relationship between government representatives and citizens. Thus politicians are typically keen to gain access to television, and political campaign fund-raising in the U.S. primarily serves to provide money for buying television time.

Expanding government video production can foster more capable and less costly video distribution networks. As Malamud explained in a Google Tech Talk, his proposal would make about 50 hours per day of original Congressional video available to the public. That large video source could serve as a testbed for the development of annotation technologies and might help to move along multicast capabilities for the Internet. Moreover, when potential state and local government video sources are added to federal sources, government video could amount to a significant share of video on the Internet. Government video might become as significant in the development of video communication as government printing has been in the development of print communication.

Related News: The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) recently established a new communications contract for voice, IP, wireless, satellite and IP-centric services for the federal government. The GSA estimates that the over-all federal contract, called Networx, has a value of $20 billion across ten years.

Note:

[1] The North American Imprints Program (NAIP) provides a database of items that were printed from 1640 to 1790 and preserved in American libraries. In a categorization of these items, the largest five categories, with percent of total records, are: government printing (30%), sermons (13%), almanacs (8%), poetry (5%), and juvenile/schoolbooks (5%). These statistics exclude records for booksellers' advertisements, subscribers' lists, playbills, and sections of books (analytic records). Printing statistics based on page counts, or page area, produce different values, but that government printing was significant for the printing industry is clear. See Amory, Hugh (2000), "Appendix One: A Note on Statistics," in Hugh Amory and David D. Hall, eds., The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (New York: Cambridge University Press). For the late twentieth century statistic, see Galbi, Douglas (2001), "E-Government: Developing State Communications in a Free Media Environment" p. 2. In the U.S., federal government documents are in the public domain (no persons holds copyright to them). Moreover, a case concerning U.S. federal court reports settled the statutory basis of copyright. See Wheaton v. Peters (1834).

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Ohio is establishing a registry of sex offenders who weren't criminally convicted of sex offenses. The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, reported:

A recently enacted law allows county prosecutors, the state attorney general, or, as a last resort, alleged victims to ask judges to civilly declare someone to be a sex offender even when there has been no criminal verdict or successful lawsuit.

The rules spell out how the untried process would work. It would largely treat a person placed on the civil registry the same way a convicted sex offender is treated under Ohio's so-called Megan's Law.

The person's name, address, and photograph would be placed on a new Internet database and the person would be subjected to the same registration and community notification requirements and restrictions on where [the person] could live.

Especially with the Internet, the government declaring a person to be a sex offender is a potent communicative punishment. Most persons consider sex offenders to have committed some of the most vile crimes imaginable. Ohio's electronic sex offender registration and notification system communicates detailed, immediate information about sex offenders' movements to interested parties. "Visitors to the [Ohio sex offender Internet site] can register to have an e-mail message sent directly to them any time a registered sex offender moves within a mile of any specified address."

The political incentives to impose such communicative punishments are relatively strong. The first sex offender registry was established in New Jersey in 1994 (Megan's Law). Within a decade, sex offender registries were established across the U.S.. Such a registery is now under consideration in the U.K. (Sarah's Law). The story of a young girl viciously raped and killed easily attracts public attention. Protecting children is a propitious basis for legislation. Even better, legislation that imposes communicative punishments don't cost much public expenditure. Communicative punishment is much cheaper than imprisonment.

Given these circumstances, communicative punishments merit strict scrutiny for due process. What about "the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury; to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel in his defense"? Forget about those rights. A declaratory judgment, based on the preponderance of the evidence, is all that is necessary for the government to communicate powerfully that a person has joined the heinous category of sex offenders [see Sec. 2721.21 of the Act].

Ohio's civil communicative punishment of sex offenders seems to have been the product of a sordid deliberative failure. The Blade reported:

The concept was offered by Roman Catholic bishops as an alternative to opening a one-time window for the filing of civil lawsuits alleging child sexual abuse that occurred as long as 35 years ago.

The Ohio Supreme Court a few months earlier issued a ruling affirming a time limit for filing abuse cases. This matter is more awful than the Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. It's more awful because priest have in fact awfully abused children. I would guess that was also true in the early nineteenth century. From 1950 to 2002, however, about $650 million has changed hands in judgments against Catholic churches and religious communities concerning sex abuse. This new legal development provides new motivation to address the serious problem of sex abuse. The solution that the Roman Catholic bishops proposed in Ohio shows that the problem concerns everyone.

Protection of civil liberties are central to the rule of law. But perhaps the only deliberative fate worse than being an accused sex offender is being accused of defending accused sex offenders. The Blade reported:

No one in attendance voiced opposition to rules [concerning civil denunciations of a person as a sex offender] submitted by Attorney General Jim Petro's office to the Joint Committee on Agency Rule Review, consisting of members of the Ohio House and Senate.

In fact, you can find right in the New Jersey State Constitution this text:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution and irrespective of any right or interest in maintaining confidentiality, it shall be lawful for the Legislature to authorize by law the disclosure to the general public of information pertaining to the identity, specific and general whereabouts, physical characteristics and criminal history of persons found to have committed a sex offense. [NJ Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. VII, para. 12, added Dec., 7, 2000]

This text essentially states that the rest of the Constitution does not apply to persons "found to have committed a sex offense." And what does it take to make such a finding? In Ohio, it's a civil declaratory judgment based on preponderance of the evidence. Liberty under law, including liberty from personally damaging government communication, should be more secure than this.

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A forthcoming Michigan Law Review article on J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series indicates that these books present a "scathing portrait of government":

a Ministry of Magic run by self-interested bureaucrats bent on increasing and protecting their power, often to the detriment of the public at large.

The author, a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School, explains that Rowling's critique of government:

is also particularly effective because, despite how awful Rowling's Ministry of Magic looks and acts, it bears such a tremendous resemblance to current Anglo-American government.

This is mere fantasy. It's self-interested scholarly attention-seeking that makes little contribution to public knowledge at large.

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