Author Archives: Michael Froomkin

Plug-Ins Considered Harmful?

Posted on October 3, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

For some time now, I’ve been planning something that I hope will be interesting and useful, that will be based on some sort of content-management platform.

I don’t want to say too much about it, but for present purposes imagine that it is organized a little like a newspaper, with sections each operated individually. Unlike a newspaper, here the “front page” will consist primarily of an aggregation of the “inside” sections, or perhaps of teaser versions of the full content that is actually located in the “sections”.

All content will be open for comments. Readers will be free to go straight to the “sections”; indeed if they are reading the “front” and try to comment, that will take them inside the appropriate “section”.

I want to use free tools that have a substantial user community, and do as little modification as I can get away with, in order to minimize the tech support I’ll have to do. I’d love to use Slash as the engine for this as it is very strong on the integration of a front and ‘inside’ sections, plus has lots of other community-building features, but Slash just isn’t user-friendly enough for either the posters or the commentators. Plus Slash requires mod_perl, which just won’t play nice with other things going on the machine I have available.

Currently, I’m looking at WordPress, with each section being a separate blog, and the “front page” as a sorted aggregation of the RSS feeds. [This requires a tiny bit of work, as WordPress and the most common plugins want to treat each RSS/Atom/whatever feed as a separate thing rather than a contribution to a melting pot.] WordPress is certainly friendly enough, and I like the ability that its reliance on themes give me to have a constant ‘look’ for the site but maybe vary the color scheme a bit for some sections. Perhaps WordPress is a little light on the cool tools. But then maybe I can live without the glitz. Even so, that still leaves out a few things that I think are essential.

For example, to make this particular site nice, I think I need robust and good-looking threaded comments. And WordPress, out of the box, doesn’t do that (yet). There is a threaded comments plug-in, but I’m very reluctant to commit to it because of its effects on the upgrade path. Will it work with the next version of WordPress? Who can know, when one is at the joint mercy of the WordPress developers and of the plugin writer. Or, what if a future version of WordPress has threaded comments, but in a manner incompatible with this plugin? Then I have to find some way of translating the historic comments into the new schema. (Not all this project will, I hope, be total ephemera.)

I could hunt around for a different CMS that already does what I want — I am, for example, learning about Drupal — but there are not that many with a sufficiently large installed base that I feel comfortable committing to them.

But one thing that this has made clear to me is that from the perspective of someone trying to find the right tool for a project, even (especially?) a person who wants to use open source tools, there’s a real disincentive to committing to a project that relies heavily on extensions and plug ins that are not supported by the core designers of your software package. By doing so, you not only put yourself at the mercy of there being appropriate upgrades for the main branch, but also of the plug in and, worst of all, the interactions between the two.

Posted in Software | 2 Comments

ITU Would Be Happy to Replace ICANN

Posted on October 1, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Reuters reports that,

U.N. agency says it’s ready to govern the Net:The United Nations’ International Telecommunications Union is ready to take over the governance of the Internet from the United States, ITU head Yoshio Utsumi said on Friday.

The United States has clashed with the European Union and much of the rest of the world over the future of the Internet. It currently manages the global information system through a partnership with California-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, better known as ICANN.

“We could do it if we were asked to,” Utsumi told a news conference. The U.N. agency’s experience in communications, its structure and its cooperation with private and public bodies made it best-placed to take on the role, he said.

While the ITU’s desire to replace ICANN has been an open secret for years, this is the clearest declaration yet from the ITU’s rather outspoken leader. The official line until now has been much softer.

As far as I can tell, the US government mistrusts the ITU for various complicated telecoms-related related reasons I’ve never fully grasped. That’s just as well, as the ITU is no friend to impecunious NGOs, who are at best third-class participants in its deliberations, and certainly never participants as of right, only suffrage.

“Washington has made clear that it would oppose any such move, despite widespread demands for changes in the current system.

We will not agree to the United Nations taking over management of the Internet,” said David Gross, a U.S. Department of State official attending a two-week conference preparing for a U.N. World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia in November.

Reading all this, one canny observer on a list I follow remarked, “The secret to good comedy is timing.”

Posted in Law: Internet Law | 4 Comments

US Digging in Heels at WSIS?

Posted on September 30, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

The US position on WSIS is stated, quite forcefullly, in EU and U.S. clash over control of Net.

Key quotes:

The European decision to back the rest of the world in demanding the creation of a new international body to govern the Internet clearly caught the Americans off balance and left them largely isolated at talks designed to come up with a new way of regulating the digital traffic of the 21st century.

“It’s a very shocking and profound change of the EU’s position,” said David Gross, the State Department official in charge of America’s international communications policy. “The EU’s proposal seems to represent an historic shift in the regulatory approach to the Internet from one that is based on private sector leadership to a government, top-down control of the Internet.”

…

Political unease with the U.S. approach, symbolized by opposition to the war in Iraq, has spilled over into these technical discussions, delegates said.

…

The United States has sharply criticized demands, like one made last week by Iran, for a UN body to govern the Internet, Gross said. “No intergovernmental body should control the Internet,” he said, “whether it’s the UN or any other.” U.S. officials argue that a system like the one proposed by the EU would lead to unwanted bureaucratization of the Internet.

“I think the U.S. is overreacting,” said David Hendon, a spokesman for the EU delegation.

Posted in Law: Internet Law | 1 Comment

Now *That’s* An Idea

Posted on September 30, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

100% lifted from Stirling Newberry at The Blogging of the President just because it’s such a fun idea:

Paul Krugman for Senate: I’m going to believe that Jon Corzine will win the governor’s race in New Jersey. But who should be the Senator? There is one outstanding resident of New Jersey who has both demonstrated intellectual saavy, and now partisan political chops in getting the word out to the public: Paul Krugman.

If progressives want to take the mantle of “the party of ideas.” This would be a sure fire way to do it: appoint Krugman to the seat that Corzine, knock on wood, will be vacating when he becomes governor.

Posted in Politics: US | 3 Comments

What’s Going on at WSIS?

Posted on September 30, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Something truly odd and potentially important is happening at WSIS.

The Register says, EU deal threatens end to US dominance of internet, while The Inquirer says, America needs to give up Internet control, but neither one really explains what is going on.

I guess we’ll know by tomorrow.

Posted in Law: Internet Law | Comments Off on What’s Going on at WSIS?

We Are So Proud Of Our Free Press

Posted on September 30, 2005 by Michael Froomkin

Writing about the first foreign tour by US Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen P. Hughes (dubbed US Minister for Propaganda by no less an authority than the Financial Times), New York Times reporter Steven R. Weisman breaks from the party line about the wonderful free press in the US, and the benighted press in the third world:

On Mideast ‘Listening Tour,’ the Question Is Who’s Hearing: She [Hughes] addressed several policies, but in concise sound bites rather than sustained arguments. In American campaigns, such messages repeated over and over can have an effect because a presidential candidate dominates the news with every statement he makes, and if that fails to work, money can be poured into saturation advertising.

By contrast, in the lively and percussive environment of this region, Ms. Hughes came nowhere near the commanding heights of the media.

Got that? In the US, during elections — the time it matters most — government propaganda is parroted reflexively by the media, and if for some reason they don’t toe the line, say a young white woman is missing, people with enough money can nonetheless drum it into the public by endless repetition on TV.

Strangely, that doesn’t work in Egypt, in Turkey, in Qatar, or even in … Saudi Arabia.

Update: Could be because they don’t have real elections there?

Posted in The Media | 3 Comments