WASHINGTON -- Comcast weathered a storm of criticism this week after it acknowledged it was monitoring the Web browsing habits of cable modem customers.
Condemnation was quick and fierce. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts) wrote a stiff letter to Comcast saying that "consumer privacy in the digital era is fundamental to ensuring trust," and the Electronic Privacy Information Center complained that "an unnecessarily large amount of information was being collected."
News reports said that Comcast came "under fire" and was "facing criticism" for its move, which was related to a network upgrade.
Some pro-regulation privacy advocates even alleged, incorrectly, that Comcast was violating the law.
But nobody seems to have stopped and taken the time to read the subscriber agreement to which all Comcast subscribers must agree before their service is connected.
The agreement explicitly says that Comcast reserves the right to monitor subscriber behavior. ("Comcast may collect information in accordance with applicable law concerning customer's use of the Service ... and other information about a customer's 'electronic browsing.'")
In other words, Comcast was doing exactly what it said it would do, and exactly what customers agreed it could do. Yet everyone was outraged.
In the end, Comcast backed down and said: "Beginning immediately, we will stop storing this individual customer information in order to completely reassure our customers that the privacy of their information is secure."
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Porn, spam, antitrust comments: Pity the poor bureaucrats at the Department of Justice's antitrust division.
Usually when they ask for comments about a proposed antitrust settlement, few people even know it's happening, let alone take the time to write.
But when the Justice Department settled the Microsoft antitrust case, it chose to accept comments by e-mail.
It was, of course, a very bad move.
The Justice Department admitted in a court filing last week that of over 30,000 comments it received, many were spam, pornography or otherwise devoid of serious substance. ("Bill Gates is the Antichrist" does not count as serious economic analysis.)
Out of those 30,000-plus comments, the Justice Department deemed just 47 worthy of serious consideration and placed them online on Friday.
As you might expect, the comments were pretty predictable. AOL Time Warner claimed that the settlement is "inadequate to promote competition and protect consumers" and something a bit tougher -- a breakup, perhaps? -- would be in the "public interest."
The Ayn Rand acolytes over at the Center for the Moral Defense of Capitalism saw things exactly the opposite way: "We hold that no antitrust case, including the Microsoft case can withstand rational scrutiny, and we ask that no sanction be placed on Microsoft as a result of its antitrust conviction."
What's odd is that the Justice Department refused to consider some comments even from serious economists.
James DeLong at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank, found out that his submission didn't make the cut. "I notice that all the comments the agency deemed 'significant' enough to put online treated the process with great solemnity and deference," DeLong says. "No fundamental attacks were welcome."
For the record, CEI's submission said in part: "Another powerful argument for accepting the settlement is that this case is doing for antitrust law what the O.J. Simpson trial did for the criminal law -- it is making it into an object of public derision, and is greatly contributing to public cynicism about the law and the legal system in general."
Raisethefist.com update: The 18-year-old anarchist who once ran raisethefist.com is heading home to Los Angeles in police custody.
Sherman Austin was arrested in New York City on Feb. 2 when protesting the economic trade summit.
Ever since the FBI raided Austin's home in January, the feds had been keeping an eye on him. According to a prosecutor speaking at a bail hearing: "They found explosives. They found M-80s. They found remote control detonating devices. Again, these are items that have no legitimate purpose. They found bottles, over sixty bottles. They found the Molotov cocktails I mentioned."
U.S. Magistrate Judge Henry Pitman denied Austin bail. Pitman said: "The possession of ... Molotov cocktails (and) remote control detonating devices all suggest conduct that went beyond a mere academic interest in these devices and I think create a risk of dangerousness."
Austin apparently came to the feds' attention because his website (a mirror is here) featured bomb-making information and anti-government screeds and had been linked to some Web page defacements.
