Take This DRM. It's Dangerous to Distribute Games Alone.

(I am back after a couple of weeks of intense thesis immersion.  So let's talk about The Legend of Zelda.)

Let's be honest: If you never wanted to erase Navi, link's fairy companion in The Ocarina of Time, then you never played The Ocarina of Time.  If I had to make a list of the top modifications I wanted to otherwise great games, deleting Navi would top the list, and it wouldn't even be close.  If I had the time, energy, and technical skill, I would go back and erase Navi from the game myself, just to be able to go back and play the game without her.

Entrepreneur, gamer, and candidate for Dad of the Year Mike Hoye recently modded his own copy of The Wind Waker, Link's first adventure on the GameCube in the Legend of Zelda series.  He didn't remove the fairy companion; to the best of my knowledge (I don't own a GameCube), there is no fairy companion in The Wind Waker.  Instead, he painstakingly changed the dialogue to change protagonist Link's gender from male to female.

Hoye enjoys playing video games with his daughter, but was frustrated by the lack of positive female role models in games.  So he did the sensible thing, and built one.  He didn't change the plot or the function of the game, just a few words here and there to make the game more accessible to his daughter.  He also made his modifications available to the public for other concerned parents.

But this isn't a post about gender in video games.  Everyone knows that video games have done a terrible job of handling gender in any sensible way, with very few and limited exceptions.  No, I want to talk about copyright.  Mike Hoye's labor of love is demonstrative of why our copyright system isn't just broken; it's insanely broken.

Why?  Hoye's brilliant Zelda hack is probably illegal.

Italy's Assault on Science? Not Necessarily.

I have seen a lot of ink over the conviction of six Italian scientists (and one other government official) in L'Aquila last week. The coverage, to put it mildly, has been bad. A serious injustice has occurred here, but most of the English-language media have been too busy sensationalizing to comment meaningfully on it.

For anyone not familiar with the situation, a 2009 earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy, caused the deaths of more than 300 people. In the days leading up to the earthquake, tremors in the area appeared to indicate a coming earthquake. One Italian official, on information from the Italian National Commission for the Forecast and Prevention of Major Risks, stated that an earthquake was unlikely. After the quake, the official and six scientists at the Commission were charged with manslaughter on the theory that their "inexact, incomplete and contradictory" statements caused people to stay when they should have fled the area. Last week, the Italian court handed down a verdict of guilty and a potential sentence of 6 years.

Make no mistake about it: This is a bad thing. Seven people who do not deserve imprisonment look likely to get it. (Although, under Italian law, the sentence must be reviewed.) But the English-language press, out of the United States and United Kingdom, has largely missed the point. They have focused on largely on two things: 1) This conviction bends the definition of "manslaughter" and 2) This conviction is an attack on science that will have a chilling effect on how scientists do business.

I am not really convinced that either one is true.

FTC Gets Crowdsourcing Right, Sets Example for Rest of US Government

When I interned in the federal government in 2010 and 2011, the government was experimenting with crowdsourcing to its employees. Every once in a while I would receive an e-mail soliciting ideas for what the department could do to save money and eliminate waste. The best idea each round would receive some recognition, and the department would implement it. (I can't remember if there was a cash bounty attached.) Submissions usually involved saving on electricity by turning off electronics or reducing paper waste by changing printing policies. I appreciated the idea, but it wasn't generating any landscape-changing policies.

Around the same time, the Government Services Administration (with input from the Office of Management and Budget) rolled out Challenge.gov, an online platform for soliciting ideas from the public. Much broader in scope, Challenge.gov is available for any government department to post challenges to the entire public. Challenges on the site range from video essays on responsible saving to launching nano-satellites to orbit. Again, this idea is an intriguing step, but limited exposure and lack of focus have limited its appeal.

This week the Federal Trade Commission has changed the game, I believe. The just-announced FTC Robocall Challenge has all the elements to get the viral attention a crowdsourcing initiative really needs.

The FTC wants you to "Be a hero." I think people will answer the call.

Who Says Internet Surfing Harms Attention Spans?

Not Congress, apparently.

The Senate voted unanimously this week to recommend that the President oppose any regulation by the International Telecommunications Union of the Internet. The resolution states that the government should "promote a global Internet free from government control." In his statement explaining the vote, Senator Marco Rubio noted that "I just want to be clear that America is on record as being in favor of Internet freedom and that we don't want to see any internationally recognized right for government interference on the Internet and the free flow of information on the Internet."

Senator Rubio authored an opinion piece in advance of the vote in Politico, discussing how important "Internet freedom" is:

"A top-down, international regulatory model goes against the very nature of the Internet. An international regulatory regime, and the politics and red tape that go with it, directly conflict with the Internet’s purpose of sharing ideas and connecting people. Governments and international bodies cannot keep pace with the Internet, and they should not try to do so." (emphasis mine)

There is a lot of room for debate about what "Internet freedom" means, and how we should react to that politically. Senator Rubio knows that as well as anyone: He co-sponsored PIPA.

Yep. That happened.

Space Leadership Act: Innovative Government or Constitutional Minefield?

This week, five members of the House of Representatives introduced a bill that is being called the "Space Leadership Act". The proposal has gotten a lot of press this week, but some basic highlights of the bill include:

• a ten-year tenure for NASA Administrators
• an eleven-member Board of Directors whose duties would involve nominating Administrator candidates and proposing the NASA budget
• a quadrennial review of all NASA programs
• "for cause" removal of Board members and Administrators.

The five Republican authors of the bill claim that the measure will reduce politicization of NASA and provide for long-term stability and predictability in NASA programs. (It is worth noting that at least one Democrat is apparently prepared to cosponsor the bill.)  It should come as no surprise that all of the five representatives proposing the bill come from Texas (John Culberson, 7th District; Pete Olson, 22nd District; Lamar Smith, 21st District), Florida (Bill Posey, 15th District), and Virginia (Frank Wolf, 10th District).

Current NASA Administrator Charles Bolden spoke this week, and, although he didn't address the bill directly, it was obvious from his remarks that he was defensive of the current structure:

“Such talk undermines our nation’s goals at a very critical time. . . The truth is we have an ambitious series of deep space destinations we plan to explore and we are hard at work exploring the hardware and the technologies to get us there.”

It is easy to argue that NASA reform is necessary: over-budget and underfunded programs are frequently in the news, and the Administration's recent challenges have given it a lackluster reputation at best. However, this bill raises a lot of potential problems.