Law Enforcement In Iowa Recognizes Craigslist Is A Tool, Not A Problem

from the good-for-them dept

While officials in neighboring Illinois are suing Craigslist for prostitution, it appears that law enforcement officials in Iowa know better. Brent writes in to note that police in Iowa have been using Craigslist as a tool to help crack down on prostitution. Of course, that doesn't make for headlines nearly as big as just blaming Craigslist...

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'Laboratories Of Democracy' At Work On E-voting

from the paper-ballots dept

Last summer, Congress debated legislation that would have required a voter-verified paper trail on all e-voting machines. I supported the legislation and co-authored an op-ed saying so. That legislation didn't pass, but Joe Hall points out that Iowa is the latest state to switch back to paper ballots in its election system. He points out that thirty states now have rules requiring a voter-verified paper trail, with another 8 states using voter-verified paper trails without a specific state law requiring that they do so. Iowa looks to be even better than some of these other states because it's moving to an almost entirely paper-based voting system. Voting machines will only be used to help voters (especially disabled voters) mark their ballots. This approach is ideal because it ensures that the paper trail won't become an afterthought, as it often does when the "paper trail" is a roll of cash register tape that no one ever looks at.

Thanks to the hard work of voting activists, it appears that state legislatures are doing the job at the state level that Congress couldn't get done last year. In some ways, this is actually a better way of doing things. Last year's debate in Congress was very helpful in raising the profile of the issue, but even most supporters of last year's legislation recognized that some states wouldn't be able to revamp their election processes in time for the 2008 elections. More importantly, if Congress screws up -- as it did when it pushed e-voting on the states with the 2002 Help America Vote Act -- it's much harder to recover than if an individual state screws up. With 50 state legislatures looking at these issues independently, states can try a variety of different approaches tailored to the needs of their individual election systems and adopt the ones that prove most successful. The momentum for verifiable elections continues to grow; hopefully the 12 states that are still conducting elections without a paper trail will get on board in time for the 2010 elections.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Yak4Ever May Not Be Around 4Ever

from the regulatory-arbitrage dept

TechCrunch is reporting on the demise of Yak4Ever, a startup company that exploited a regulatory loophole to allow them to offer free international calls. The bill was being paid by large telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon, which were forced to pay exorbitant rates to connect the calls under the FCC's byzantine long distance regulations. Apparently, the Baby Bells got fed up and simply stopped paying the bills, and the FCC hasn't ruled on the issue quickly enough to keep Yak4Ever in business. We wrote about a similar company, called FreeConference.com, back in January. That one offered free conference calling services, again subsidized by exorbitant interconnection charges. In that case, we criticized AT&T for blocking the calls instead of appealing the fees to the FCC. But regardless of the legal details, it's awfully hard to have much sympathy for either Yak4Ever or FreeConference. It seems pretty clear that they're not creating new wealth; they're just taking advantage of poorly-thought-out FCC regulations to make a buck at the expense of other phone companies. This is one of the reasons regulators should leave interconnection rates to market forces whenever possible. If long-distance interconnection rates were determined in competitive markets the way transit agreements are negotiated between Internet carriers, this sort of regulatory arbitrage wouldn't be a problem. It's only when the FCC is setting rates by fiat that these kinds of opportunities crop up.

Timothy Lee is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Timothy Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Exploiting Telco Regulations For Free Calls And For Profit (Lots And Lots Of Profit)

from the so-easy,-it's-almost-criminal... dept

Earlier this year, we wrote about how suddenly a bunch of "free" calling services were popping up that all seemed to use phone numbers in Iowa. This included a service that would let you call an Iowa number and from there call anywhere in the world for free as well as a variety of "free conference calling" services. All of these systems were actually exploiting some legacy telco regulations, that were officially designed to help rural telcos get extra money to build out more rural service. Basically, the government allowed rural telcos to charge high termination fees to other telcos when calls from their lines terminated on one of the rural telco's lines. So, if you had AT&T and called your cousin in Iowa who had some small rural telco, AT&T would actually have to pay that telco some charge per minute, with the idea being that the telcos would use that money to invest in infrastructure. Of course, the infrastructure they invested in wasn't exactly building more lines to wire up others in the town, but in VoIP systems so they could reroute calls in to anywhere else, and then team up with various online sites to get as many calls as possible routed through those systems. Then they could just sit back and collect the millions of dollars rolling in from telcos. Broadband Reports points us to an article at the Wall Street Journal going into more details about how this happened -- and how the FCC is now scrambling a bit to see if there's a way they can stop it. In the meantime, the WSJ piece notes that while the telcos have been told by the FCC that they have to keep connecting these calls, they've simply stopped paying any of the termination fees as they await the results of the various lawsuits. Of course, all that's done for now is made the various free conference call services switch to other rural telcos in other states. Eventually, though, they'll run out of other states to go to (or the regulators will finally realize how their regulations are being exploited) and the little regulatory exploit will go away.

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