a16z Podcast - a16z Podcast: A Whirlwind Tour of Policy Issues in Tech

Episode Date: November 3, 2015

There's a "game" being played right now among lawmakers and tech companies around policy issues, and as tech touches everything, everyone has to play some version of it. Even if the game keeps changing. Even if they don't want to. Or do they? What if the game could be reinvented in a way that respects, but doesn't reinforce, an entrenched system -- especially given newer ways of engaging? Part of the problem is that only big companies can afford to play the game, argues Julie Samuels, executive director at Engine (which does research, analysis, and advocacy for tech entrepreneurship): "Bad policy is bad policy because it's bad policy. But the big companies can afford bad policy." Joining Samuels in this a16z Podcast discussion about the evolution of policy and tech is Techdirt's Mike Masnick (who also founded the "digital-native think tank" The Copia Institute). They end by giving us a whirlwind tour of current policy issues in tech -- from patents and IP in China to cybersecurity, privacy, and Safe Harbor in Europe ... And the gig economy, talent, and immigration. All in just under 60 minutes.

Hi everyone. Welcome to the A6C podcast. I'm Sonal and I'm here today with two special guests and we are going to be talking about technology and policy. And joining us for that discussion are Julie Samuels, who is the executive director of Engine, a nonprofit advocacy and research that supports the work of startups. And Mike Maznik, who is the founder and editor-in-chief of really popular tech policy and beyond site tech dirt, as well as the president of the Copia Institute, sort of a think tank focus. on policy and technology. Welcome. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks. So we thought we do just sort of a whirlwind tour through all kinds of tech and policy issues, because we only have like a limited amount of time. So let's just go through a bunch of them. And the reason we'd like to do this is because, you know, I feel like we'd sometimes have specific things dedicated to just one topic. But we have here two people who have been immersed on these issues across the board. And so I can't think of any two people I'm more interested in sharing this podcast with to talk about all these topics. And I guess the first question, you know, just kick things off because

it's really a conversation between you guys is what's happening now? Like, why now? Like, Mike, you've been at, you found a techter 20 years ago. And Julie, like, Engine, I know has been around, but you went there for a specific reason. Like, what's happening to bring all this stuff on? Like, is this new? I don't think it's that it's new. I think it's a couple things. Number one, tech companies are getting a lot bigger. So they're not flying under the radar of government anymore. more. Oh, that's because they're getting bigger, right? And number two, government is paying attention to tech companies. So those aren't actually two separate things. It's two sides of the same coin. But, you know, this is trite. But in a lot of ways, every company is a tech company

and everyone uses tech. And so policy, regulation, legislation, like all of these things are unavoidable. Yeah. And I think that second point is the key one, which is that everything is tech now. And so the idea that, and that goes both ways, right? So everything that's being regulated in some ways touches on technology and everything that technology is doing is touching on all different areas of the economy that involve policy. And so the two things are totally connected and also, you know, to some extent historically, you know, what people think of as the tech industry or the startup ecosystem or whatever hasn't been all that engaged necessarily on policy issues. And so, you know, historical clashes on policy issues have gone weird. And so I think

in the, you know, in the last few years, you know, people have gotten a lot more engaged because it's more important for them to actually really be engaged. So when you say engaged, like, what exactly do you guys mean by engaged? Because I'm seeing all flavors of like straight up fights to, to actually people having lobbyists, to, there's a whole range of things. Like, what do you guys mean by engaging? There are all those things. There is the kind of engagement where you have individuals sending emails or tweeting at members of Congress saying, you know, we saw that a lot during SOPA, during net neutrality, when the users and the consumers got involved. But you also see companies, sorry to end up to you for a second. Do you mind telling our audience just really quickly what SOPA was the best of familiar with the acronym?

It was something that both Mike and I worked on. Stop Online Privacy Act. It was a bill from 2010, right, 2010. Yeah, 2011. 2011, a copyright, ostensibly a copyright bill that was kind of put out largely by the content, you know, the movie and the recording industry to under the rubric of stopping a copyright infringement. But what we really thought was it was bad news for the Internet. And it was something, it was one of the first times that the Internet community really coalesced around something and stopped it. You might remember an Internet blackout day, January 2011.

11. And that was a really important moment for this industry and for this community. And then we had the net neutrality fight earlier this year. But again, it was a time when the users, when individuals, 4 million individuals reached out to make their voice heard on that. So that's one level of involvement, right? But of course, you also have hiring lobbyists. Like you said, a lot of companies are now opening offices, government affairs offices, where they do their own lobbying. You have a lot of individuals in our community. giving heavily to candidates. That's another way of involvement. And we're just becoming more integrated with this process. And that's fairly new. So that's one of the things that you say is

changing because what you just described, all those toolkits, like being able to, you know, do email campaigns, motivate people, grassroots efforts, organize. These are things that have been forums that have been around forever. But like how has that changed? Because I know you were mentioning that some of this has been changing over time. One of the things that was different about sort of these two campaigns in particular was that these were generally speaking these were the kinds of issues that historically the public didn't weigh in on these were issues that were heavily lobbied and whatever decisions were made were made by big corporate interests and their lobbyists and in both of these cases you had real you know public activism um getting people to get

engaged and to speak out and to do things on their websites or to get others engaged, which I think was actually a really important part of it, that it wasn't just about speaking out to, you know, emailing or calling DC, but it was often using the tools that people had within the tech industry themselves to engage their users and engage others and get them involved. And you had this point where you had two things that basically, if you had asked anyone who was sort of deeply engaged on these issues. If you had asked us beforehand, if there was any chance to stop something like SOPA or to stop bad net neutrality rules, it seemed unlikely because these were the things that you didn't stop because you had really, really powerful interests with strong

lobbyists on one side. And yet, because enough people were able to get engaged and speak out, it actually really did change things in a way that was different than before that didn't involve you know, just like two giant industries lobbying up against each other, but actually real people engaging. I think that's another interesting evolution actually because you're also describing more people getting involved because of the forms of engagement available to them. But there's also this reality is what you guys are saying about tech permeating everything now or everything is a tech company. I don't think that's a trite statement at all, Julie, because I think that's actually very true. And because of that...

Just wait until your toaster tells you to contact your congressman. Yeah. But I think the point is that the products are touching our lives every day. And so, and I think it's actually harder for companies who are more B2B and whose products do not touch everyone's lives every day. That's exactly right. You are talking about people who are internet users. We actually recently, I live in New York now and recently there was a bill that the mayor, Mayor DeBosia was pushing that had to do with Uber and other ride sharing companies. And I'm sure a lot of listeners might have followed that. But essentially what we saw happen was people kind of.

I think they felt like their Uber was being threatened. So they got involved, right? The same thing with net neutrality with SOPA. People use the internet every day. They felt like their internet was being threatened. They got involved a lot more so than they do with some other political issues that you might follow that don't really touch what we think of as traditional tech. So I think this stuff that's kind of consumer and user facing really resonates with folks. And even the business to business stuff actually can resonate, perhaps not as strongly, not in the way that you're going to get as, as big.

response, but like, you know, for example, you know, there was a fight not too long ago, which I think just got settled. Actually, I think I got an email like a couple hours ago between Zenefits and ADP, where they got into a big dispute over, you know, payroll issues, which again, this is not a consumer issue. It's very much a business to business issue, but it was another situation where it was definitely sort of an old line business, um, upset. set about the way in which a newer startup was competing and went to court over it. And it was a mess. But it got a lot of news. And, you know, that wasn't a case necessarily where people were protesting. But, you know, if you make enough, get enough media coverage,

things will happen. And actually, you know, with Zenefits, they had a similar thing that they just had this dispute with ADP. But before that, they had a dispute with the state of Utah. That's right. We actually covered that in the 860s podcast. One of the things that Parker said that I thought was fascinating is that they had originally gone in trying to show, do demos of their technology, and it was a big mindset shift for them to realize that you actually have to tell the broader story, the context in which this is all playing out. I think these things are actually really important for the entire community.

When you see those kinds of battles with Xenafits in Utah and Zenefits ultimately prevails, it was great. But when you see also Uber and Lyft and Airbnb and these stories are in the news, you're also reminding people how regulation, how government plays, right? So people are paying attention to policy in a way they haven't before because these companies have no choice but to engage with policymakers. And it's making news every day. I mean, one of the interesting aspects of that is I think that a lot of people, perhaps for very good reasons, were very, very cynical about the political process for many years because it was, you know, their ability to impact it was basically nil. And yet in the last few years,

seen so many of these examples where speaking out and actually getting engaged has made a difference that I'm hoping that it actually takes away some of the cynicism towards policymaking and what goes into it and the ability of, you know, everyday people to actually have an impact on what happens. Well, don't you think that's been the case so far? I think that's actually playing out. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's still there's still a fair amount of cynicism. But I do think that people are now much more willing to believe that they can make a difference. That's actually one of the things that I loved about what Ted said about regulatory capture because my original impression of the phrase regulatory capture was that it's all about

rent extraction. And it's just like, you know, but what I realized, what he described was something softer, that it's about familiarity with the processes, the hallways, how things work, getting people to understand, you know, what's at stake in the relationships and sort of how to navigate that. And you're describing like a lot more avenues. for people to start, like, communicating with those players. Which, that's a really interesting point. This is something, I engage in D.C. with policymakers a lot. This is something I spend a lot of time thinking about.

I don't have the right answer. But you have, imagine a spectrum, right? And at one end of the spectrum, you have industries who've been engaging in D.C. With policymakers and state capitals forever, right? Totally entrenched interests, telecompanies, telcos, pharmaceutical industry. They've been there for a bazillion years. At the other end of the spectrum, I think you see these kind of, quote-unquote, stereotypical tech companies, startups, and they're like, we don't need to engage at all. We're going to build our thing and it's going to change the world.

And I don't think either of those paths is the path of the future. I think that there's something in the middle, and we haven't quite figured out what it is, but there's something in the middle where people are going to feel comfortable and feel productive and be able to engage because they know the way the world works. And, you know, if anyone's got ideas, let me know. Yeah. And I agree totally. I think, you know, one of the things, you know, if it turns out that the tech industry, that the answer for them on policy questions is to build up a giant lobbying setup and apparatus in the nature of like the telcos and the pharmaceuticals and the number of other industries, then I think the tech industry has failed. Why do you say failed? Because this is an industry of folks who are super innovative and always thinking through new and creative solutions and the ability to use communication tools and new and interesting. ways and to gather people and to build communities and to make an impact in all different fields to then go into the political and policymaking process and to go back to the old tired broken way of doing things which is this you know this lobbying setup that would be a failure

there's there's no reason why that should be the answer to what this industry does when it comes to actually influencing policymaking that's not to say that there should be no lobbyist and there should be no understanding of what happens in dc or that it should be totally ignored it. That's not what I'm saying. But I agree with Julie that there's a different way to do things. And it's about actually engaging people on the issues as opposed to just like knowing which strings to pull and who to give the most money to. I actually agree with that. I think we're also saying the same thing because I think that we agree that there's a middle way, a third way. We agree that there's, you know, it would be a failure to only reinforce an existing system. But at the same time, there has to be a little mutual give and take. And I think that in that context, it is important to think about engaging in you in different ways. Yeah. I totally agree. That's really, I mean, that part, that part's one of the hardest parts.

It's saying to people that, you know, there's a game that's played and you have to play some version of it, but it's going to be a better, newer version. And that's really hard to under, it's really hard to get your head around. Right. Right. Well, and it's a game that you're changing the rules as you go along. I mean, it's not like it's easy to do that. As we talk about, you know, and I think we'll get into some of these specific issues that are

kind of bouncing around right now. I think people understand there have been some. victories. There have been some losses. And as you take a step back and think about those things, you can kind of start to create a framework to understand what's working and what isn't and why. You know, this is definitely a lot of the way that we have been thinking about things in terms of how we've been setting up Copia, which is very much about, you know, how do we search for ways to help, you know, entrepreneurs and the tech industry be innovative in how they deal with policymakers. And that isn't about like, you know, telling them that you have to go.

lobby this person or whatever, but actually to work together to come up with interesting and unique solutions that actually, you know, that engage their innovative brains, you know, and ideas and let them do what they do best, which is innovate as opposed to just, you know, having to convince, you know, however many members of Congress to do X or Y, that's, you know, that's not a process that's exciting, actually coming up with something innovative that is a real solution to things. And let me kind of pile on there for a second. There's something that I think is really interesting and exciting about this community and that when we talk about politics in particular, and it's that this community is not kind of wedded to traditional political parties in the way

that a lot of people are. Like, I really believe that most people you meet in this tech community, particularly in the start of community, are looking for the best ideas from the best candidate, from the best policymaker, whomever. And they don't care if that person is a Republican or a Democrat. They probably prefer that person more an independent if that's possible. Yeah. And that's, I mean, when you look at most of these debates, right, they haven't fallen along traditional party lines. And that's actually been so good because, you know, for the most part, the debates are much more on the issues, much more about substance. You know, when they start to get partisan, they start to get silly. And you just get all these, you know, ridiculous things being thrown about. I think that's much more useful. And again, it just fits with exactly what Julie was saying, which is that these aren't, you know, traditional fights. And that actually allows for more innovation in terms of how, you know, how they're dealt with. And frankly, for those of us who work in this space, it's a lot more fun. So actually, then let's switch gears and let's do a set of lightning rounds around all the issues that we think are kind of interesting and top of mind.

And let's talk about patents because that is just, you know, let's just start there because that's actually the three of us came together at the patent conference a few years ago. And that was a lot of fun. I remember Richard Stallman standing up in the back of the room like it used to us. at one of these events and sort of making a statement. But anyway. Well, I remember him walking through the audience yelling at people. Oh, right. Okay. You remember it differently. I'm actually glad you remember it better than I do. I've probably blocked it out. If you could just quickly distill what you think the major issue is as it applies to software. This one is near and dear to my heart. I think that if you were to distill the problem

in kind of a couple sentences, it's that we have a one-size-fits-all system. So we treat patents in the pharmaceutical industry, the same as in the software industry, and that ends up making no sense. Economically, it doesn't make sense. Conceptually, it doesn't make sense. I can talk a lot about this. I'm not going to do it in a lightning round. But what that has kind of created is that we've got a system that works pretty well for pharma and doesn't work well at all for software. And why doesn't it work well for software? Like, how would you distill that? Well, so number one, a patent covers 20 years. And for most of the people listening, I think they'd understand that talking about 20 years of exclusivity for a software invention is crazy. Right. The

average smartphone is covered by 250,000 patents. The average drug by 30 or 40 patents. So when you start that's a big number. That's a big difference. Right. Digging through what we're talking about here. So what that's led to is people who abuse the system, which is, you know, I'm making air quotes here, a pretty big patent troll problem. They go after big tech companies and no one really cares because that is just, you know, not all that interesting. But they started going after small companies, startups, individuals and we had a big patent trouble. So that's kind of where we are. Congress has been dealing with this for some time, but we've kind of ended up in a traditional pharma versus tech loggerhead. And it's it's kind of created a situation where things have slowed down on Capitol

Hill. We can't. I shouldn't say we can't. I should say we've had a hard time coming up with a political solution. Yeah, it's a little bit stagnated. And so I'm going to argue against that a little bit, which is that, like, I agree that software patents are a complete disaster and a complete mess and need to be fixed. And the one other element that I'd add to it beyond the 20-year thing is the, just the, you know, talk to any engineer and show them a patent and ask them what it's about and they won't even be able to tell you because the patents are written by lawyers, not by engineers, and it's just junk.

It's got nothing to do with what the actual innovation is. And so you have this very broad language. But I'm going to take it a step further. and say that, you know, I actually am not convinced that patents work in other industries all that well either. I think it's much more pronounced in the software industry and in the internet industry because of, you know, how many patents there are and how many patent fights there are. I think I'm not going to go all the way down into why I think they don't necessarily work in pharmaceuticals either. But I think that, you know, based on that, I'd love to see a solution

that really gets to the heart of the problem with the overall patent system, which is around looking at what is and what is not considered obvious and whether or not you can allow something such as independent invention. I think you would wipe out so many of the problems of the patent system if you had a real independent invention defense, which is that if you, you know, if you're just tinkering in your garage and you come up with something, you had no idea that some weird, vague patent existed from, you know, 15 years ago that somebody's going to sue you over it, you should be able to go in and say, look, I didn't copy this. I had no idea that this weird patent existed. Right. You came across it because you just did it. Right. I had an idea

to innovate. This guy sitting on a patent who hasn't done anything. I've actually built something, you know. Right. It's actually similar to startups because one quick thing there is like when you, when you think about people doing prior art searches before they even start inventing or creating something, I'm thinking now about a startup who has a great idea thinking, oh my God, well, this has all been done before. So forget it. I'm not going to do anything. And the best companies were actually started in spaces where it was very crowded. Oh, totally. Yeah. And that's, well, I love this conversation. I also want to talk about this. This is relevant to copyright too. What we're really talking about is how as a society and as an economy, we incentivize

innovation, right? And how we do that is really hard. And I shouldn't say it's not really hard to incentivize innovation. How we kind of measure that is really hard. I think that by default, the White House does this. Everyone does this. We say, we are an innovative nation and we can, prove it because we have X number of patents. And every company does that, too, like IBM. I've talked about this a whole bunch that we have something, we have something that you can count and therefore it becomes inevitable that becomes a metric. And the best example is to how ridiculous that is, is that go look at China, right? China has been ramping up the number of patents that they've been filing, you know, like crazy. And so, you know, there have been some who have taken that

number and said like, oh, look, you know, now China's being super innovative. And I'm not saying they're not being super innovative. But then you start looking at those patents. And for a while, and this may still be the case, like China was incentivizing people in their prisons that they would give them shorter prison sentences if they were able to file patents. So it's just all this numbers thing. And then you look at like all of the big patent lawsuits in China, which, you know, for years, the U.S. especially has been pushing for like, you know, we have to get China to respect patent laws because they're copying everything. So they have to respect patent laws. And so China's like, okay, we'll do that and we'll ramp up our patent enforcement and our patent

laws. And then you look at all the cases. And every single patent case in China has been a Chinese firm against a foreign firm and guess who always wins. And so China has realized that patents are a form of protectionism. And it's a neat form of protectionism for China because they can use that to block competition from foreign firms while pretending that they're doing exactly what the has been asking them for. It's just, I mean, one of many examples of how patents and intellectual property can be used for protectionism and where the sheer numbers in terms of number of patents that you get is not just a meaningless number, but it's a misleading number.

I think it's actually led to a really dangerous culture in the valley and in tech companies in general where there's this pressure to get as many patents as possible, as quickly as possible. And then what you end up with is a bunch of really crappy patents. and those patents end up in the hands of bad actors and that's how you have a system that's been exploited. And I don't know how to fix that culture. That, to me, is kind of the core of the problem. I actually don't even know if I agree, Julie, that that's a culture because I actually think a lot of the engineers and computer scientists that are coming out of universities these days don't kind of really give a shit about patents. And they're just fine with kind of being their own thing.

So there's two issues. One is that you have lawyers to tell you that you absolutely have to get patents. And then, you know, you have some venture capitalists who also tell startup entrepreneurs, that that is one of the first things you have to do. And if you're showing up at a meeting, you have to have patents. And there are some venture capitalists who I think are more enlightened on that than others. But for plenty of entrepreneurs, you hear them say, like, well, when I go and get an investment, the first thing that I'm asked about is whether or not I have a patent on. I think the origin of that is about the moats for your business and being able to protect it. And the reality is that for a lot of software businesses, you can build a moat through other methods like network

effects. Oh, that's so much more important as network effects. The first thing you should be doing is making sure that you have an audience and a market and focusing on that. And the moats come naturally with all of those things. Right. Well, that's network effects because it's more valuable for more people for the service because you're building a damn good service. People want to stick around. I mean, the only thing that patents really do is protect you on the downside. And if you're protecting on the downside at the beginning, again, I think you've just done something wrong. I'm glad to hear you guys talk about this because you're taking actually much more nuanced approach that I had envisioned because I actually do believe, you know, having edited those

freaking 35 off-eds or maybe it was 40, I don't even remember, but oh my God, that it's a very nuanced and complex topic agreed. It is a problem. But I also think it's completely unfair for other players who sometimes say ban all patents because I actually think they can be very useful in other scenarios. And there's a lot of alternative arrangements as well. I don't think either of us would say blow up the entire patent system. I would say, but I actually, as someone who is a patent lawyer as well, I actually think we are doing a disservice to the system by allowing it to continue in this broken fashion. Instead of really protecting, again, we need to like take a step back, think about what it is we're trying to incentivize here as a society. Think about what it is we're

trying to create. And if we have a better tailored system to do that, it will also actually serve that system. And we're not doing that right now. Yeah, totally. And I would say, I mean, I might feel pretty strongly that no patent system would probably be better than the patent system that we have today, but that doesn't mean that no patent system is the ideal situation. But I think that, you know, what we have today is totally broken. And as Julie said, I mean, it leads to just no respect at all for the patent system because it doesn't deserve any. There are other ways to incentivize innovation. Many, many other ways. We talked about things like network effects, but there are other pieces to like government sponsoring R&D.

prizes, awards. There are other things we can decide to do as a society that will push people to create and build things. And just that, I mean, you know, taking a step back, right? I mean, the thing that incentivizes most people to create stuff is not patents. It's usually either that they have a personal need themselves and realize like this would be useful, I can make it for myself and therefore I can also make it for other people. I think the incentivization on the front end isn't the problem. I think it's actually more in the back end thinking more about protection when you have bad actors because it's a self-reinforcing system. So that's where like the defensive sort of acts. You know, I think that people overestimate the need for, you know,

protecting against bad actors through some sort of legislative solution. Again, I'm not saying there, you know, I'm not completely against the patent system. I think there are places for it. But, you know, in in a lot of cases, there are ways to handle that. And some of that is just through shaming, you know, the companies that are doing direct copies. And, And there are social mechanisms that often work more effectively without all of the downsides of an overburdened patent system. That's a good point. All right. Well, let's switch gears to another issue, which I think, ironically, is in the public conversation and doesn't have as many social pressures, but actually only recently got social pressures because of Snowden.

And I'm thinking about, you know, the context of surveillance and more specifically cybersecurity. A big loaded word, big topic. Can you guys quickly distill some of the core issues? like two seconds because we're doing lightning rounds here. Okay. So cybersecurity is obviously a big issue. There's a lot of concern. Right now, Congress is trying to do something. And as we record this, the Senate has recently just voted and passed through a bill called Sisa, which is a terrible name. Which is a terrible name. Before that, there was SISPA and other things. Oh, wait. Is SISPA's back? How did I miss all this? Yes. Well, yes. Without the P, it's Sisa, but it is the same basic concept,

which is technically an information sharing bill and officially they will say a voluntary information sharing bill and the idea is that it among other things and it's a big complex bill with lots of moving pieces but among other things

it grants immunity to companies if they were to share information with the government for cybersecurity purposes. So concretely speaking, let's give you an example. Is this like the NSA saying to Google we need to use the user data

to catch terrorists? Is that what we're talking about here? that's what they'd like you to think of it. Yeah, maybe. I mean, they would give examples that are different. The information will go through Homeland Security, who can then hand it on to the FBI or the NSA or anyone else. And they would say it's more about Chinese hackers

are trying to take down the electric grid, and therefore, you know, some company that, you know, an electric company is being attacked and wants to share information with Homeland Security, who can then help protect and share the attack information with Google and with other companies and whoever else and try and stop that attack. Whether or not that is actually necessary or needed is not clear at all. And in fact, I've been looking and I have yet to be able to find a single computer security expert who thinks this is necessary or useful in any way. Why don't they think it's necessary or useful in any way?

Well, I mean, they can already share information. There are a number of mechanisms in place today to share information about threats and risks and vulnerabilities and things of that nature. And so they haven't seen this need, which raises some questions about why Congress is so focused on this idea that they need immunity. And then that raises other questions, which have been brought up by, you know, some of the politicians who are opposed to this bill who have pointed out that it really seems to be something of a surveillance bill and discuss. which is that, you know, once companies are convinced to share this information, it can go to the FBI and to the NSA. And it appears that despite some restrictions in the bill, there will be ways for them to then use that for effectively for domestic surveillance. I would just say that efforts to tone it down, efforts to insert some more protection for privacy. Again, as of recording

this podcast, look like they have failed. Yeah, there were a number of amendments put up that would quite good. That would have done a good job of protecting privacy and maybe made this into really a cybersecurity information sharing bill, but all of them got struck down. And I'd also point out that a lot of the big kind of well-known tech companies, Apple, Twitter, Google, they all oppose this bill. I think this is a really important piece here. I think that to go back to what we talked about at the outset here, how tech companies, particularly big tech companies engage with the process, this has been really interesting because oftentimes in other industries, you see these larger companies kind of agreeing to go along with what the government needs, particularly under

the rubric of law enforcement and safety. In this instance, I think that some of the larger tech companies understood that their users are more important. I shouldn't say are more important. That might be oversimplifying. But protecting their users' privacy, protecting their users' desires was a really important thing, right, Mike? Yeah, and it's actually important to note that, I mean, this bill, in many ways, could be seen as good for the tech companies themselves on its face because it granted them liability from lawsuits. So for their lawyers, no liability. Yeah, sorry, protected them from liability, gave them a safe harbor, whatever, immunity, gave them immunity. And so, you know, in early versions of the bill, it actually

looked like a lot of the big tech companies were actually fairly supportive of it because, you know, I'm sure their general counsels were like, hey, this is great, we'll protect us from lawsuits. But it appears that as more and more in the public start to speak out against the bill and we're concerned about it, that these companies realize like, hey, you know, the trust in us is really important. The trust of our users is super important. And here is a chance to stand up for their user's privacy rights. And so, you know, especially in the last few weeks, which maybe is a little later than some of us would have hoped, you know, a lot of these big tech companies have come out against this bill. And which, you know, raises.

an interesting question of why Congress still went through with it. If they're saying that this is all about cybersecurity and the biggest tech companies on the planet are saying, like, we don't agree with this bill and we don't need it. Right. There seems like it's a more political than a technical issue, which unfortunately is a crux of the matter with a lot of these things. So you mentioned Safe Harbor. Let's actually talk about the Safe Harbor Act and how that's playing out in Europe right now, because that's really coming top of mind with all the headlines and then the privacy issues as well. Like, can you guys do a little lightning round level distillation? Okay. So EU and the

US, this is something that most people don't know about or don't realize, even in the tech industry where it actually really does matter to them, which is that if you have users who are in Europe, you really well, should have been engaged in what is the EU

US safe harbor process, which says that you can then transfer information and data on your European users to your computers in the US and sort of says that you will be protecting their privacy. Well, it says that you'll be protecting their privacy at the same level as Europe requires. Which is much higher than what the U.S. requires. And that was the only way

that that was sort of allowed. The process, it was sort of a bit of a boondoggle. Like, we actually went through it ourselves for tech dirt and that, you know, we basically had to pay some company based in D.C. to like look over our privacy policy and make sure we were okay and they sign off on something saying that we are now qualified. And I think we have to pay them every year or something or every few years. Well, not anymore. Not anymore, right, because the EU Court of Justice basically said because of the NSA spying that the whole process and the whole EU safe harbor setup no longer matched or perhaps never

matched with EU data privacy rules. It was really tough to describe in an interesting way. But it throws up a whole bunch of questions about any internet company, especially the American-based company that's trying to do business in Europe, whether or not how they handle their data is legal. And in fact, there are now all sorts of lawsuits that are beginning to pile up and concerns and different countries are beginning to investigate. And there are concerns about what does that mean? Will it mean that you have to keep your data in Europe or perhaps within each individual country? God, what company would want to do business in Europe after

all this, frankly? That's another question. I mean, for a small startup, that's, I mean, it's not happening. Effectively impossible. And so you're cutting off, you know, you're cutting off business for all sorts of things. And then related to that are these questions of how it's going to be fixed. And there are sort of, you know, people are scrambling to try and fix it. And then at the same time, in the background, sort of looming is the EU is rewriting their data privacy regulation. And the drafts that have come out so far look horrible, like dangerously horrible, like people who are. Why do you say horrible?

Like what specifically is like making you react? It's, these are people. And part of it is that. The world of privacy and the world of like free speech don't necessarily cross paths all that often, and yet it should. And so you have this directive that is being written by people who are totally focused on the privacy aspects without any regard to the free speech aspects. And the idea that, you know, what is embedded in this is this idea that you can ask for erasure of information. You can ask for information to be erased. And that could be, you know.

So we've seen that already, right? And so, right. Yes. The biggest example of that is the right to be forgotten. So this is not like an abstract thing. Right. This is a very real thing. So we have the right to be forgotten situation.

Right now it only applies to search engines. So you have Google. So if somebody in Europe doesn't like a story, they can't necessarily ask for that story to be taken down, but they can contact Google and basically say that the story is no longer relevant to their name. And so it should be delink. So if you do a search on Mike Maznick and. You know, and I have said that I don't like this, you know, story that said something bad about me, that Google will no longer show that under my name. You know, we've had articles that have been disappeared, thanks to this right to be forgotten. In fact, then we wrote about it and then had that article disappeared.

Oh, my God. That's so much. Let me just say something for a second. That's a little, I hope it's not too abstract. But I think about this a lot. And I think about how it is, you know, what we need to do as a community to make sure that the Internet works. And it works really well right now, right? But it really only works if you trust, right? So you have to be able to trust that when you search for something, you're going to get the real results. Or when you do a transaction, it's going to be protected or it's going to be encrypted or that you have privacy. Like all of these things, to my mind, are really based on trust.

And when you talk about right to be forgotten, when you talk about some of these problems with the safe harbors, I think it's so interesting because that is potentially a breakdown in trust. if you went to Google and searched for Mike Maznick or for TechDirt, and you're not going to get the real results, that fundamentally changes the way we all interact with the internet every day. It's such a good point because it seems so obvious, but yet it's not in the sense that every single piece of information we see.

I mean, there's obviously some built-in bias in every algorithm. That's just, it's silly to think of any algorithm as objective in any pure way, the designer's building in some biases. But your point is so powerful, Julie, because I think it means that it completely, you never know what you're getting. You just don't know. You have no idea.

And then add to that the fact that, you know, different borders and different questions, and with the right to be forgotten, for example, you have the EU who is now claiming that Google needs to do this kind of censorship worldwide. And then suddenly you have sort of a veto on any kind of information going to the, you know, the lowest common denominator, you know, whichever country is going to censor the most,

do they have the right to then... Dictate it for the rest of us. dictated globally. And you have a, you know, there was a case in Canada not too long ago that said exactly that, that said Google how to delete certain information and how to do it globally. And that's a huge concern about how do you, how do you build a global internet when you have those kinds of rules. And Google can ostensibly afford to go jurisdiction by jurisdiction. But, you know, most other companies, not even just, not even startups, like most other reasonable size companies can't afford to go jurisdiction by jurisdiction. Yeah. And the really ridiculous thing about this too is the fact that like

for the people who think they're doing this to attack Google or Facebook or the big internet companies and believe that these kinds of laws are going to attack them, it actually entrenches their position because they're the only companies that can afford to do that. And you can't be a startup now and build a global search engine or social network from scratch because you can't afford all these different jurisdictions. Right. There's a high cost to entry. That is such an important point, by the way, about everything we're talking about. Bad policy is bad policy because it's bad policy, but the big companies can afford bad policy. They can afford the lawyers to navigate it.

It's the little companies that can't. And part of what's so exciting about this industry is that people still are out there building, creating, doing, and making new and better ways to do things. And I love that about working in this industry. But if we allow bad policies to get in place, we are going to exactly what Mike said. We are just allowing the big companies to become more entrenched.

And that's so dangerous. Let's push gears here for a bit, because we've been talking about a lot of issues that are scary and real. I'm not trying to minimize them by how abstract they are. But at the end of the day, for a lot of people in their day-to-day lives, they're not actually physically interacting and touching with these issues. I think one issue that comes to mind is issues around the gig economy. And, you know, especially because we're working, you know, a lot of us are hiring babysitters, house cleaning services, taking ride-sharing cars to places.

There's so many aspects of this that touch our lives. I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts on on where we stand there. I think this one is so complicated because I think what we're really looking at is a framework for thinking about employment that no longer makes sense. And we have a framework in this country and we have it for a reason. And it's because, so right now you can be a full-time employer, I'm simplifying care. You can be a full-time employee or you can be a contractor. And if you are a full-time employee, we grant certain really important protections to people, like that you get paid for overtime and that you aren't discriminated against. And, We have those things historically in this country for important reasons.

But people work differently now. And that's really cool that people can work differently, right? That you can have flexibility in your job, that you can pick your hours, that you can work however you want. That is also meaningful and important. But it doesn't make sense with those current classifications. And as we think about what that looks like, it's just really hard to unpack as a society, particularly because laws and regulations. move slowly. So how do we protect people who need protection while we also protect these companies that are creating new and better ways, oftentimes better ways of doing things? Hard, hard

questions. Yeah. And I mean, you know, this is this is one of those topics that actually lets me go back to my, I have this degree in labor relations, which is kind of, I don't know that about you. I thought you were in law for some reason. Nobody knows that about me. That's amazing. Did you know this, Julie? I did not. It is a mostly useless degree, and it included many semesters of labor history and things like that and learning about like the original labor movement and everything that went into that. And you recognize like there were important reasons why you needed that, right?

I mean, you had companies that were clearly taking advantage of people and abusing them. I mean, flat out abusing them. And so you needed something to push back on that. Now, you know, this is a very, very, very different world. And of course, you know, organized labor went off in a, you know, potentially bizarre direction as well, you know, since its founding. And so we have this very sort of old industrial view of companies, industry, workers. And it doesn't fit with anything that's being done today with sort of, you know, the gig account. and a number of different internet things.

And people trying to fit these businesses and these roles and these jobs into, you know, this industrial concept makes a huge mess of things. And then on top of that, the fact that most of many of these things, you know, many of these things are driven by local and state laws and you suddenly have, you know, hundreds of different legal regimes and, you know, policymaking, organization. and, you know, elected officials to deal with. And it's just a complete quagmire. And yet, even with all of that, you see some of these new services pop up that are incredibly useful and incredibly valuable and are clearly doing things in a much more efficient and useful manner that allow for really powerful things to happen. And we're in the very, very early days of that. And it's a little bit scary where some of those things might be, you know, cut off or shut down because of these, these old setups and this sort of old mindset.

But that, you know, that doesn't mean we should just sort of wipe it all out necessarily. I mean, it's not like people can set their own pay rates, which is how contractors can actually operate. Right. And there are absolute questions about what is the best way to do that. And some people have talked about, like, adding like a third classification between, like, you know, independent contractor and full-time employee, and maybe that's an interesting solution, but that raises a whole bunch of other questions. And then you're just sort of, you know, duct-taping on another solution to a situation that's already messy. You know, I would prefer a

solution where we sort of take a step back and look at the whole thing and say, you know, what is going, what makes the most sense and what, you know, can we set up a structure that actually works better, you know, for this overall setup that allows for innovation and creates a space that where these kinds of things can happen and can work well. But, you know, where it does protect against the, you know, possibility of someone being abused or exploited as, you know, we know has happened in the past. There are two things thematically that I think you just said, Mike, that cut across everything we've talked about today that are so important.

Number one, watch the states and the cities because more and more of everything that touches tech policy is going to be happening locally. We're seeing that here. We're seeing that across the board. And that's the first thing I'd point out. The second thing I'd point out that I think is really interesting is we've talked about this, I think, in a couple subjects today. But this idea that the laws and the regulations, they don't move as fast as technology.

We all know that. But how do you flip that? How do you create laws? How do you create regulations that are open to change that you can iterate? Because right now that's a huge part of our problem, right? We're working in constructs that just don't make sense anymore. more. And let's say we were somehow to pass a law next year about the gig economy. I guarantee you that's not going to happen. But imagine for a second it is, then we'd be stuck with that law for

decades, you know, decades. Your point about being able to rapidly iterate is a really important point. But I do want to make sure it doesn't go to the other extreme, which is we'd then start pre-defining the laws before things they've even played out. Because one of the biggest observations about this entire space is it's really, really early days yet. And it's like the internet in the very early days. It didn't have any third-party ecosystems services and, you know, down to things like tax attorneys who specialize in this to, you know, everything that plays out health insurance providers. And, you know, actually, we talk about Obamacare decoupling this. But anyway, there's a lot of different things that need to happen still. And I think, you know, one of the

things, and I talk about this all the time because I think it's like this great example, which is like people talk about why Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley and why it became so successful. And, you know, there have been all this research and studies and they basically concluded like this strange part of the California Civil Code in like 1892 or something that basically said every person has a right to to be able to earn a living and therefore has a sentence been interpreted to mean that non-compete agreements are unenforceable and that allowed for much more jobs changing and information flow with that and all these things. Right and so there's all sorts of really interesting things that happened because of that, but take a step back now and say, wait a second,

okay, this one little random sentence that probably, you know, nobody was thinking about non-compete agreements in 1892 or 1872 or whenever it was passed, I forget, but somewhere around there. And yet it had a major impact in terms of how an entire innovative economy grew. And, you know, but what it really did was just sort of create this framework, which basically said go forth and be able. And create. I never knew that was the origin of. why non-competes are not enforceable in the state of California. And so that's a big deal.

And so the more that we can think about those kinds of regulations and the ability to set up a framework that says we want to enable innovation, we want to create a safe space for these things to occur and for information to sharing to happen and for innovation to flow, that's really powerful and that's really useful. And that's a really good example of a good use of regulatory policy for, you know, proactive, you know, pro-innovation policies, but, you know, it's not heavily prescribing a specific situation and giving you this big list that requires all sorts of specialists. Right.

It would be hard to know that from the outset, right? Oh, absolutely. There are tools that policymakers have in their toolbox to address that different ways. There's something called sunset provisions. Sure. One of the amendments that failed today for the Sissabill, right, was a sunset provision, which is to say five, six years, we're going to look at this again. This thing is going to expire.

and not be the law. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that worked a little bit with the Patriot. Yeah. I mean, I used to be really, really supportive. I used to think that every bill should have sunset provisions. But then we've seen, like, it's very, very rare that a sunset provision has ever actually been useful because it comes up again. Exactly. And while I agree with the provisions and some of the, you know, enabling,

you know, again, enabling rapid iteration, at the end of the day, it's still just entrenching existing enforcement through legislation. when what we're really talking about here is a set of mindsets. And I think that's really the crux of the matter. That's a good point that we're trying to get to the mindset. But it's so hard to know what those mindsets are going to be. That's true. That's exactly right.

It's hard to know. Okay. Well, you know, on the note of talent flowing and moving around, why don't we wrap up and talk about immigration? Yeah, I think that this is something I think a lot about. And I think when we talk about talent, I actually don't like talking about it just with regard to immigration. But, I mean, I think we're talking about education policy.

I think we're talking about access to capital policy. I think we're talking about diversity and how we can create more people talented or more people with the appropriate kind of skill set to work in the tech space, whether that be with technical skills or otherwise. And I think it's talking about how to make sure that capital is flowing to kind of non-traditional entrepreneurs, more diverse entrepreneurs. There are so many policies to play here in the interest of this being a lightning round that I could talk about this for hours. We're talking about things like equity crowdfunding.

We're talking about things like coding boot camps. We're talking about things like creating communities in places outside of Silicon Valley in New York City. I mean, these are all things that in addition to immigration, which is so fundamentally important, that we fix the immigration system in this country. But all of these things are important. to increasing talent. And it's not just about increasing talent. It's about giving access to good jobs to so many people who need good jobs. And this is something that is so important, not just for the tech community, but for, frankly, for our entire nation and for the world. It's for our humanity, too. That's such a good statement. I don't have much to add. I mean, I agree. And I can't say it

quite as eloquently. So, I mean, the only thing that I'll add to that is, you know, just the fact that so many of the great innovations that we have come from this sort of interplay of ideas from different people with different backgrounds and different perspectives coming together and that mashup of viewpoints and perspectives actually leading to that innovation that is so powerful. And yet when we cut that out, whether it's through education or immigration or access or whatever it might be, we lose out on so much of this innovation. And that's a a huge concern and something that, you know, I think we should be focused on rather than sort of the very narrowly tailored aspects of some of these debates where people get, you know,

very political about some of these issues without realizing the broader perspective of it. I think we could do a whole other podcast on this issue alone. I think it's so important. I agree, you guys. We'll have to save it for another podcast. And in fact, maybe Mike will do it next time on the TechTurt podcast, which, because I know you guys have a podcast as well. And Julie Engine, you guys put out some amazing work. I know you guys put on events and put out interesting papers and research. And I will keep listening to that. Thank you so much for joining the A6 and Z podcast.

Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, guys.