Aereo legal insanity

So a western Judge has just issued an injunction against Aereo in several states. For those not familiar Aereo is a new service that works like this.

It starts with a tiny antenna about the size of a dime. This antenna can receive over the air TV broadcasts. Think of it as a tiny set of rabbit ears. Aereo sells you access to one of these antenna's. Only instead of sitting it on top of your TV with tin foil enhancements it sits at their location. You connect to the signal that antenna receives via the internet. Aereo facilities house millions of these little suckers. The key here is one antenna per user. Another key is that in order to have an account you have to live within the broadcast range of the over the air signal. So for example I can't have a New York Aereo account for New York broadcasts living in Los Angeles and vice versa.

Cable companies and networks are going absolutely ape shit over this and are claiming this constitutes a 're-broadcast' of their signal which is illegal. Hmmmm.... if it is a re-broadcast then anyone that uses a set of rabbit ears is guilty or 're-broadcasting' from the rabbit ears to their TV set. So long as the user to antenna ratio is 1:1 it is not even correct to call this a broadcast in the first place.

Broadcasting 

Broadcasting is the distribution of audio and video content to a dispersed audience via any audio or visual mass communications medium, but usually one using electromagnetic radiation. Wikipedia

Sending a signal from an antenna to a single system is not broadcasting (it is uni-casting, ie sending to one as opposed to many) just like it is not when using rabbit ears in your house. The difference here is the length of cable and transmission protocol used to connect your device to the antenna. In the case of rabbit ears the analog signal is sent via cable to your TV antenna input. With Aereo the signal is digitized and shipped to you via the internet which could involve a physical wire the whole way or in many cases jump over wireless links. The cable companies and networks are basically ignoring the fact the technology is based on a 1:1 basis just like a set of rabbit ears or ATSC tuner and instead focusing on the increased technological method of getting the signal from the antenna to the end user.

To muddy the waters a bit there are a couple of things that cloud the issue a bit from the simple explication above. Aereo is also selling a premium account that also incorporates a DVR (also housed at their location) which allows you to time shift over the air broadcasts without having any equipment at your house. Additionally since you can access your account from multiple devices, I suppose there is the possible consideration that if you used your one antenna to stream content to multiple devices at the same time you could run afoul of being a broadcast at that point.

Now, time shifting I think has already been through the wickets so the only wrinkle here is again the notion of Aereo hosting the DVR instead of it being at your house. Again if it is a one to one situation then the only difference is the length of the connection between your equipment and your viewing devices. As for the multiple device thing... you could conceivable split the signal from a single set of rabbit ears to multiple TVs and I do not think anyone would bat an eye. But that is much less well explored territory.

Details aside this is pretty much a new tech company running afoul of some very old and powerful entrenched interests in keeping things just they way they are. You may wonder what the big deal is... and it is money. Specifically advertising money and cable company re-broadcast agreements. You see cable companies have to pay to take that over the air signal from the networks and push it out over their cable systems. So having a company do this without having to broker a deal with the networks gets both parties noses bent out of joint. On the advertising front this method of viewing is not built into Nielson surveying methods so any Aereo customers are not going to figure into the eyeball count that determines advertising costs.

In my opinion the re-broadcast agreements do not apply. The cable companies take in a single signal from the network and broadcast that signal to all of their customers. They are not maintaining a 1:1 ratio of antenna to customers with an independent stream of content to each individual user. Apples and Oranges comparison. There would be an issue if Aereo were allowing customers to sign up out of market ie to folks physically living outside of over the air broadcast coverage. But they are not. So they have a very strong case to make that they are not providing something not already available to any user. They are just selling remote hosting of the antenna and DVR equipment. Both technologies not under question if housed at the users house. The advertising solution should be easy as well... just broker a deal for Aereo to provide sanitized viewership statistics to the rating companies and voila... no different than counting the eyeballs watching cable or typical over the air broadcast solutions. But no... as usual since this is new and may undermine someones way of making money it is causing a fuss.

Thankfully this injunction only hits a couple of markets Aereo is in. And they already have an appeal headed to the SCOTUS for a final ruling on this case.  So far most federal cases have sided with Aereo. The cable companies are saying if Aereo wins then they will start setting up the same kind of solutions to break away from the need for re-broadcast deals. Networks are threatening to kill over the air broadcasting altogether in order to kill Aereo and any chance cable companies could use this method to avoid the re-broadcast deals.  Fun fun fun. Don't you just love our legal system and corporate interests at work?

Who Watches the Watchers?

It is hard to say what the overall opinion in this country is regarding Snowden. But for those that think his case is black and white and he is a traitor I ask you give the following some consideration.

Imagine if Edward Snowden, US Citizen and IT Geek contractor douche-bag were instead named <insert stereotypical foreign name of choice>. And was say a Chinese (or < insert foreign nation of choice >) citizen and IT Geek contractor douche-bag having spilled the beans on said government domestic and international signals interception spying programs?

What would your feelings of this supposed persons actions be?

Wash rinse and repeat for Bradley (Now Chelsea) Manning and Edward Snowden.

If you would brand them traitors to their respective countries and unworthy of further consideration I applaud you and bid you continue on bashing these two folks as you were. However, if you think.. hmmm... I might have liked and cheered what these proposed foreign folks did even though it was precisely the same action, then perhaps you are not fully considering what it is Manning and Snowden did.

In my opinion the heart of this case is a pretty simple issue. And it isn't a citizens right to privacy or a governments right to secrecy. It is something more fundamental. Who watches the Watchers? Ok, perhaps simple is the wrong term. The problem is simple to list but solving it is a fundamental, perhaps unresolvable, problem of governments.

In both cases the US government was doing something that was at best questionable, and at worst completely wrong. And in both cases the 'system' that they were operating in was fundamentally broken with no real recourse for effectively elevating the issues they were exposed to. I read often that many say they had 'no right' to take action on their own. Something I strongly disagree with. We the people of the United States of America In order to form a more perfect Union... these are not just words. They are the foundation of our way of government. And it starts with we the people. When the government we empowered and formed steps out of line it is not only our right, but our duty to act to bring it back in line. It is NOT ok for our government to hide behind itself and hold itself separate from the power of we the people. 

Who watches the watchers? If not the Mannings and Snowdens (aka Whistleblowers) then who? They are we the people. They were exposed to information of wrong doing with no effective legal way to expose it. And they took action. And now that we know I ask this question. How many more knew and did not act? 

If you contend the law of the land is supreme and our representational government can enact law that shields itself from the actions of the people then you give up what our forefathers worked so hard to create. A government of the people, as opposed to one that is above the people.

But they broke the law and have to pay for that? There is merit to this point. But let us look at a similar situation where laws where broken in order to help enact change. Civil Rights. The civil rights movement is littered with those who faced and endured legal consequences for breaking the law of the land upheld by federal precedent (separate but equal) through non-violent protests and civil disobedience. But is that the legacy we really want? That in order to change that which is wrong we have to punish folks who do and fight for what is right? We see that as a necesarry part of how to correct the wrongs of our government? We should not celebrate images of Dr. Martin Luther King behind bars for civil disobedience. We should hang our heads in shame that we did not figure out how to deal more expeditiously with that horrible problem. So it goes with Manning and Snowden. They beyond a shadow of a doubt uncovered actions by our government that were and are unconstitutional. For that they should be thanked, not banished and/or locked up.

Google + Foxcon, a Ludite nightmare come true? Part 1 of a look at our future with robotics

Google and Foxcon are working together to bring manufacturing back to America. Only it isn't quite what you might think. The effort is focusing on massive advances in automation. Meaning the 'jobs' will mostly be for robots. For those that are familiar with history they may recall the Ludites. Today you hear the phrase as a derogatory denouncement of a person or group that is against 'change' in general. Yet the movement itself had a fairly simple concept at heart that was easy to understand. If you replace all the jobs with technology, what will people do? That was the Ludite nightmare... the bogey man that spurred them to action. Granted it was irrational (at least in the big picture, it was undoubtedly real for some) in their time as the advent of large scale factories fueled the industrial revolution. The result is the 19th-21st century move from agrarian societies (farm based) to industrial and urban centered societies. While far from perfect, it is extremely difficult to argue that we are worse off in 2014 than we were in say 1814. By almost all measures we live in better times across a vast majority of the world.


So there are obviously neo-Ludites that fear actions like this one by Google and Foxcon on the basis that it will lead to massive un-employment. Are they right this time around? I don't think so but I also am unsure how to quantify my belief. So I wanted to take a minute and run through some simple thought experiments. Feel free to point out any errors in math, I am notorious for allowing 2+2=5 type errors. Comments always welcome period.

First... start with a representational population of 100 people. It makes the math easier and the numbers a bit easier to comprehend. Currently the US distribution of labor is (Following from CIA fact book)

agriculture: 1.1% (agains for ease of discussion I will use 2% in most cases referring to this, which reflected ~1970 levels of agricultural effort in the economy)

industry: 19.2%

services: 79.7%

US population is ~316.5 million, labor pool is ~155 million or roughly 49% of the population is employed. Unemployment has been bouncing around 7% meaning 7% of the 155million viable labor pool candidates can't find work. 7% of 49 is ~3.5. So that gets us the following for our 100 person representational population. 

100 people total

49 laborers

45.5 laborers employed

3.5 laborers looking for work. 

The remaining 51 people are split between the young and the old. The young are presumably supported by the workers. The old are retired and provided for either by the fruits of their labor and or social programs again supported by the workers. Incidentally if you have ever wondered what the fuss about baby boomers retiring is all about, the crux of it is that the pool of folks on the old end of the spectrum is going to grow considerably. Since currently one of the primary means of retirement income is Social Security that means there will be a greater and greater percentage of the population out of the 'work force' relying on SS which increases the load on the remaining workers to keep things going. 

Of the folks working

~1 works in agriculture to feed everyone

~9.5 work in industry making things (though the US is a net importer of manufactured goods I think). The remaining 38 or so, ~80%, of the work force are unemployed or work in a service industry.

In the US that means the absolute worst case scenario where robotic automation takes over in the job market in our representational population would be a loss of 9.5 jobs... or in terms of percentages it would represent a 19.2% increase in unemployment for a total of 24% unemployment. A truly frightening number to be sure. This is in line with The Great Depression which saw rates as high as 33% in some areas of the world. Also this is assuming robots can only take over industrial type work... which is a bad assumption. Read up on what IBM is working on with its WATSON system and any knowledge based service industry relying on voice interaction looks to be in danger at some point as well. Call center type jobs could potentially be replaced whole sale very rapidly in any use case IBM creates a successful model for. Combine service industry smarts, with advanced robotics and a lot of traditionally safe areas of employment in the service industry become viable for automation as well. And if you replace a high percentage of the workers the foundation of the management world is eroded as well.

In order to see the end game here I think you have to return to the Ludites and the world they lived in. Checking on the US history of agriculture you can see that as recently as 1870 agricultural work represented 60-70% of the US work force. Today it is under 2%. The labor force has made two major transitions in the US since then. It first migrated into industry, then with outsourcing technological innovations in manufacturing the US moved into a Service based economy. That 2% or less number is truly amazing. That is to say that only 2% of people in that 49 (that is less than 1) are needed to feed folks in my representational population based on current agricultural production methods. 150 years ago it would have taken up to 70 people doing backbreaking manual farm labor just to provide food for 100. That is a massive improvement. Looking further you may also realize that means in 1870 you had 70 people out of 100 employed in agriculture which represented a higher percentage of the population involved in a basic subsistence activity than is engaged in the entire economy of today (49 out of 100 in my example based on current US statistics).  

So let us continue on down the rabbit hole. Lets say the industry jobs reached the same level of automation as agriculture and you went from 9.5% to 2%. And in the service industry you went from ~80% to 2%. That is to say where before you needed 49 people in a population of 100 to do all the work needed, you now only need around 3. Leaving 97 people not needing to do anything if all we want to do is maintain our current level of existence. Lets put that in context so that perhaps the light at the end of the tunnel starts to shine through here.... Go back to 1870 where 70 of 100 were engaged in agriculture and apply this logic. You are saying that when you are done 1 out of 70 is working in agriculture and the rest are doing nothing. Same amount of food is available just a WHOLE lot LESS work (by people) is needed. That is what happened from 1870 - 1970. But surprisingly enough you don't see 69 out of 100 folks sitting around doing nothing because they are not working on a farm. 

This leads to a couple of questions regarding our current situation. 1, is it possible to reach a similar level of efficiency with manufacturing and service industries as we have reached with agriculture? 2, if it is possible, is there something to take the place of these two primary employment areas? I would add a third. Does something need to take the place of manufacturing and service industries? The need for a replacement in my mind is completely determined by whether or not we have reached the pinnacle of 'civilization'. If we have then we don't need to keep having everyone slave away if only a small fraction need to do so in order to maintain our 'pinnacle' state. If we haven't, then in 100 years or less there could be folks looking back on this time the same way we look back on the 1870s. And probably wonder why folks were scared of embracing such obvious improvements :-).  

So let us back out to that full 100 people representational population again. And lets move everything to whole numbers. Without a change to employment expectations lets employ this theoretical improvement via automation technologies in both industry and services. This is the absolute worst case scenario because that basically inverts the employed vs. unemployed because there is no change in employment expectation (IE between 18 and 65 you are part of the labor pool and expected to be gainfully employed). 
That makes it:

51 are either to young or two old to be considered as part of the labor pool 
46 are gainfully employed
3 are looking for work

changes to:
51 - young and old
3 - gainfully employed (~2% of 49 in all 3 areas)
47 - are looking for work

In terms of our current system of economy that translates into a much higher unemployment rate than seen in the worst hit areas during the great depression (33%). This would effectively destroy the notion of capitalism as we currently understand it. Keep in mind that presently 10% unemployment is a bad situation in a modern economy. If you are not working in a capitalistic economy you have no way to exchange labor for capital. And when 43% of your population has no means of access to capital they cannot purchase goods. At that point the engine of capitalism grinds to a halt. Horrible right? But why? Basically because capital is no longer being distributed effectively through the population to drive supply and demand exchanges.

The interesting thing in this theory is that you do not have a drop in GDP. It is just being produced by far fewer people meaning we would be far more efficient in our efforts. In theory there is just as much money in the economy, all you have lost is the means of effectively distributing it across the entire population. If you solve the distribution issue you then have something very valuable. If you do not solve the distribution problem you have something very dangerous. In both cases it is the same issue you have to deal with. You now have massive amounts of free time in the able bodied population that needs to be directed somewhere. The old cliche 'idles hands are the devils workshop' has some bite. You have to solve the distribution issue otherwise that free time becomes destructive. The Ludites were a case in point of that particular issue. But if you do solve it then you are looking at a similar increase in the amount of time we have to dedicate to new activities as we did in moving from a subsistence agrarian based economy to an industrial/service economy. What exactly we could accomplish with that is a hell of a good question.

So solving distribution... that is tricky. For starters,  in order to be most effective, people have to want to work. Currently that incentive is based in making money. Re-distributing the effort of 3% of the population to support the remaining 97% would require some currently unheard of levels of taxation. At least if the income evenly concentrated in the remaining workers. You see in order to maintain the quality of living the amount of distribution currently happen would have to remain largely the same. So effectively the remaining 3% of workers would be making effectively what they do now, and all the other money would be going to support the remaining population. Again that is at maintaining current quality of living levels.

The answer is actually something that isn't new. Slavery. Yes... Slavery. If you want to avoid the moralistic overload of that word you can use the more neutral "Free Labor" or perhaps more accurately "Extraordinarily cheap labor". Because you are talking about robotics instead of people either seems appropriate. So in this case, instead of moving the work to 3% with the assumed bump in pay, you are instead moving it to robotics and software. What does a robot or software need to survive? Once that is provided for the remaining result of robotic labor should be redistributed. The issue of separating the robotic creators from the labor results of their creation (to be held distinctly different from the profit from producing them in the first place) is a much easier task than the notion of taxing the working population at rates approaching 100%.

Now don't think I am going on about some insane level of technology like say the character Data, from 'Star Trek the Next Generation'. We are not talking about self aware machinery. Just a new generation of machinery. Lets say industrial jobs were all based on car making. So in our 100 person example 9.5... make that 10... out of the hundred are working in an auto plant making cars. We wave our magic technology wand and a new factory needing only 1 person to run it to be just as productive. Just more robust assembly line robotic technology needing less human oversight, fewer (perhaps no) tasks that still have to be done by hand. Some may think that impossible... while taking for granted the change in general involvement of the population in agriculture from going from 70:100 down to 1:100 from 1870 to 1970. Here we are 'just' talking about going from 10:100 to 1:100 for industry, and around 35:100 to 1:100 in service. Assuming the rate of change were identical (highly unlikely I understand) to agriculture these would represent 15 year and 50 year marks. IE in 15 years we would hit the manufacturing efficiency goal, and the service mark in 50.

Considering the rate of overall change in technology/society/economics from 1870 to 1970 looks more like an exponential growth curve I'd wager decent money we will hit those marks in considerably shorter times. Say 5-10 for the manufacturing goals. Less than 20 for the service overhaul. Mostly because the things that are hard to replace on the manufacturing side are in many ways more difficult technically than replacing say a 'waiter' at a restaurant. Solve the issues in manufacturing and it is simply a cost benefit equation governing how fast they take over service jobs. The X factor in my opinion is not the capability of the technology. The seeds of most of this are already starting to sprout. Its the transition issues. As these technologies mature (like the story this whole article started from) it will increase pressure on the work force to adapt. If the system cannot adapt to absorb the sudden movement of large percentages of its work force within its current methodologies, then you have the recipe needed for significant socioeconomic change. Translation in plain english: Enough people will be seriously pissed off and potentially dangerous that something has got to give. Worst case we would be looking at outright revolution and copious amounts of bloodshed on a scale not seen in the US since the civil war. Best case... probably still looking at the most significant changes to how the world works since the round of revolutions that occurred circa 1776.

So if all my rounding and prognosticating came to pass and Ludite nightmares became reality that would mean sometime around 2035 we could face the following situation
51:100 are retired or to young to work
3:100 are able to produce a GDP output equivalent to 2013s US economy (~49k per head)
46:100 are of sound body and mind and are doing ????? (PROBLEM)

The critical point won't be 2035, or whatever date it might actually be. It will be some tipping point leading up to that time between threatened established interests fighting for survival of the status quo vs. a change they cannot stop. The irony in my scenario is that those entrenched interests will collectively be causing the change as they continue to blindly chase the bottom dollar.

Anyway, in part 2 I plan to ramble through why I think this wouldn't be the end of the world. And take a stab at how I think we could make this transition to an as yet determined post today type system on the basis of robotic labor... or maybe that will be a part 3.