ARTS & FARCES internet

Business

Maureen Johnson has published a simple manifesto: I am not a brand. It’s in response to being asked to speak—as an expert—at conferences and panels where all the speakers are hawking themselves. When I was writing full time I did a fair bit of this myself. And I hated it. I only did it when I had a book to sell. Truth be told, my appearances probably did more harm than good with regard to sales but I met some neat people and acquired more stories to tell. “I am not saying that it is a bad or dishonest thing to try to sell your work,” Johnson writes. “It is not. What I am saying is that I am tired of the rush to commodify everything, to turn everything into products, including people. I don’t want a brand, because a brand limits me. A brand says I will churn out the same thing over and over. Which I won’t, because I am weird.” But wait, it gets better: “We can, if we group together, fight off the weenuses and hosebags who want to turn the internet into a giant commercial.” And here’s Doc Searls from May 2010: “Reputation vs. Branding.”

ESRD

The University of Minnesota Board of Regents heard a report on the effects of Obama’s healthcare reform on UPlan, the University’s health insurance program. Beginning in 2014, an employee who pays more than 9.5 percent of salary for employer-sponsored health insurance will be entitled to switch to the exchange and the University would have to pay a US$3,000 fee to the government. If the employee’s share of the cost of employer-sponsored insurance exceeds eight percent of the employee’s total household income and that income is less than 400 percent of the federal poverty level (US$42,520/individual; US$88,000/family), a voucher would be issued by the University: About US$5,519 for an individual or US$11,177 for a family, which the employee could then take to the exchange. In 2018, a Cadillac tax of 40 percent will be imposed if the employer contribution to the insurance plus the employee cost of the insurance and any Flexible Savings Account exceeds US$10,200 for individuals or US$27,500 for a family. The tax is applied only to the excess. The University may be able to avoid the Cadillac tax by more aggressively promoting wellness and providing wellness awards for actually achieving goals, not just participating.

James Hipwell has begun writing a column about waiting to find a donor for his second kidney transplant for the Guardian. It’s really well done and sheds a lot of light on what transplant recipients as well as those waiting for an organ go through. There’s an ulterior motive for the series: To lobby for a change in the UK’s organ donation system to one of “presumed consent.” Under a presumed consent system, instead of organ donors having to go out of their way to opt-in to being a donor, the entire population would be automatic donors, having instead to opt-out. It’s needed worldwide, but the UK appears to be ahead of the rest of the world in this regard. The UK government commissioned a series of television ads for organ donation. The first one, created by AMV BBDO, is available on the Guardian‘s website.

Sidney Jourard was one of the brightest shining lights of humanistic psychology. He was fond of saying, repeatedly, that all human behavior is based on either maintaining or enhancing the self-image. There is, of course, a corollary in US law. Call it the prime directive of American jurisprudence: All law is based on maintaining or enhancing corporate profit.

What, you don’t believe that? Here’s three very recent examples.

Victoria Espinel, the US intellectual property czar, has finally released her “Joint Strategic Plan on Intellectual Property Enforcement” (.pdf; 892KB). It’s an entertainment cartel wet dream, complete with secret treaties, pirate nation watchlists (entertainment cartel executives can nominate countries for inclusion), and evaluations of claims of piracy losses (the US Government Accountability Office has already dismissed these claims as total fabrications).

The document’s section on secret treaties—like the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA)—is especially disturbing. The section starts out by acknowledging the need for transparency and outlines the Obama administration’s plan for it. But the very same section ends with a complete reversal: “... including consideration of the need for confidentiality in international trade negotiations to facilitate the negotiation process.”

As Cory Doctorow notes, intellectual property treaties have traditionally been handled openly and transparently by the United Nations’ World Intellectual Property Organization. The negotiations were made private by George W. Bush’s ACTA. Obama and his administration have eagerly embraced ACTA, going so far as to intervene in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the text of ACTA itself, claiming a threat to national security.

Membership and comments have been disabled on this website. You’ll need membership login credentials to participate in the wiki; email me with a brief note and I’ll manually add your account.

I’m doing this for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is migration to a new version of Expression Engine, the content management software on which Hasten down the wire runs.

But mostly this is happening because the spam problem has become untenable. There’s no real Askimet for this version of Expression Engine, and the Ellis Lab folks don’t seem to be too interested in the problem. It’s become a real problem and I just don’t have the cycles to deal with it.

While I’ve become quite frustrated with the direction Ellis Lab is taking, I readily acknowledge it’s their decision to make and I know where the door is. I’ve got my hand on the doorknob, but I just don’t have to cycles to make the jump to Drupal just yet.

With regard to comments, as John Gruber eloquently stated, “you write on your site; I write on mine.” Trackbacks are still turned on; use them.

State pension funds—including the one in which I am a member, the Minnesota State Retirement System—are in serious trouble. But instead of dealing with the problem head-on, politicians are pulling out the oldest play in the book, apply cuts to those workers who have yet to be hired. Mary Williams Walsh, reporting for the New York Times, writes, “Nearly all of the cuts so far apply only to workers not yet hired. Though heralded as breakthrough reforms by state officials, the cuts phase in so slowly they are unlikely to save the weakest funds and keep them from running out of money. Some new rules may even hasten the demise of the funds they were meant to protect.”

Colorado has cut benefits for current workers and on retirees. The cuts to retirees is facing a legal challenge. Colorado argues that a 1961 US Supreme Court ruling held that pension cuts for current workers is allowed when “actuarially necessary.” It hopes to stretch that ruling to cover retirees as well.

IBM lowered its pension benefits at the precise time most of its older workers were scheduled to see a bump in retirement benefits. The workers brought legal action, but a federal appellate court in 2006 found that IBM was within its rights (.pdf; 119KB) to cut the pension benefits. The IBM plan, the court noted, was “almost, but not quite, a defined-contribution plan.” Pensions are, by definition, not defined-contribution plans, but rather defined-benefit plans. The IBM employees also made the mistake of bringing the legal action on the basis of age discrimination under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) when everyone knew, as the court affirmed, “all the terms of IBM’s plan are age neutral. Every covered employee receives the same 5% pay credit and the same interest credit per annum.”

Minnesota isn’t waiting for the outcome of the Colorado case. As of 1 January 2011, post-retirement adjustments are lowered from 2.5 percent to 2.0 percent, there’s a six-month waiting period for initial post-retirement adjustments, the interest rate on future refunds is lowered from 6 percent to 4 percent, interest on suspended benefits (for those who return to the workforce) is eliminated, and the vesting period is increased from three to five years.

The question—that hopefully the Colorado retiree case will resolve—is if membership in a state pension fund is a contractual relationship. “An employer is free to move from one legal plan to another legal plan, provided that it does not diminish vested interests” or benefits already earned, wrote the court in the IBM case. In the case of my employer, the University of Minnesota, employee contributions to MSRS are mandatory.

Business

In a shocker, the University of Minnesota didn’t even place in the Star Tribune‘s list of 2010’s top 100 workplaces. Even John’s Auto Parts, Inc. was a better place to work. Here’s a sliver of a clue as to why: Faced with lowered funding from the state, a governor’s illegal unallocation, and severe budget cuts the unit in which I’m employed—the College of Design—elected to heap all the cuts on a handful of employees. Instead of an equitable across-the-board cut (like the one instituted at the University of Wisconsin), the College of Design cut the salaries of the external relations staff by 10% for fiscal year 2010. The college’s top leadership—dean, associate deans, assistant dean, and chief of staff—also took 10% cuts and salaries were restored earlier this month, but still.

Internet

Here comes the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) opening an inquiry on network neutrality and already the incumbent telcos and cable companies are whining like children in the back seat after 200 miles on the back roads. Their whining was harmonized by the Republican commissioners: Robert McDowell said in his statement (.pdf; 79KB) that by opening the inquiry the FCC had “lost the moral high ground,” and that net governance should be left to the nongovernmental technical groups (populated mostly with, you guessed it, the incumbent telcos and cable companies). “For decades now, the international consensus has been for governments to keep their hands off the internet and to leave internet governance decisions to time-tested nongovernmental technical groups. Once that precedent is broken, it will become harder to make the case against more nefarious states that are meddling with the Internet in even more extensive ways than are contemplated here.” Democrat Michael Copps when right for the BP jugular (.pdf; 82KB) in his statement: “I, for one, am worried about relying only on the goodwill of a few powerful companies to achieve this country’s broadband hopes and dreams. We see what price can be paid when critical industries operate with unfettered control and without reasonable and meaningful oversight. Look no further than the banking industry’s role in precipitating the recent financial meltdown or turn on your TV and watch what is taking place right now in the Gulf of Mexico.” Buckle up; this one’s going to be interesting.

John Naughton, writing in The Observer, delineates everything you need to know about the internet. Nine enormous ideas are packed into this eminently readable article. Naughton observes that the while the internet as deeply infiltrated our lives, we’re oddly unreflective about it. Writing that much of corporate media’s coverage of the internet is negative, Naugton sets out to elucidate how we should be thinking about the net in compliance with George Miller’s magical number seven, plus or minus two. If you don’t read anything else this week, read Naughton’s piece. Highest recommendation.