Congress is already very close to passing companion bills to censor the internet, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA, S. 968). This is in addition to the domain name seizures already underway by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

All of these efforts are terrible ideas. Their supporters don’t understand or care about the internet and are happily willing to break the internet to appease the content industry. It is among the very worst contemporary examples of a government that is of, by, and for special interests, and if it passes, it will be a slap in the face of democracy, free expression, due process, and technological innovation. To top it all? It won’t even do much to stop online infringement.

Fortunately, there may be signs that things are turning our way. I’ll get to that further below.

EFF has a great summary of the several ways SOPA can lead to a site getting shut down. Section 102 deals with foreign sites and is the most all-encompassing, but 103 and 104 are actually easier for rights holders to (mis)use, and they apply to domestic as well as foreign sites, so I’ll start there.

Section 103 allows IP rights holders to go directly to a website’s payment processors and advertisers—and to demand that these third parties cease all business with the website operator. These payment processors and advertisers then have just five days to act. The website operator has the right to file a counter-notice that they are not substantially dedicated to infringement, but (a) they may not get the chance until after the payment processors and advertisers have already cut off payments, and (b) the third parties have no obligation to take the counter-notice as final and re-establish a business relationship.

Section 104 takes this “default=censorship” strategy even further. Everyone in the internet ecosystem—registrars, web hosts, advertisers, financial processors, search engines, etc. etc.—gets near-categorical federal and state immunity for any decision to terminate a business relationship with a site (or even to shutter a site) “in the reasonable belief” that the site is dedicated to infringement. Under Section 103, a rights holder must at least file a claim. Under Section 104, even the intimation that a site is infringing might be enough to get it shut down—and the site would have no legal recourse.

The Administration also gets in on the fun in Section 102, which gives the Attorney General the power to use government-mandated Domain Name System (DNS) filtering to stop Americans from accessing “foreign infringing sites.” A domain name, such as Google.com, is an easy-to-remember way to tell one’s computer to go to a specific numeric address (e.g., 74.125.39.147). It is this number (the IP address) that identifies that site’s server (the computer that hosts the website). Everyone enters the domain name into their browser’s internet address bar, but the numbers would take one to the same site. Click on the numbers above or paste them into your browser to see for yourself.

Under Section 102, if a site were found to be primarily dedicated to infringement, the government could “seize” the site’s domain name. More precisely, the domain name registrar—a company that keeps track of which domain names are attached to which servers—would, if US-based, be compelled to stop sending users to the correct server. All domestic ISPs would also be forbidden to take you to the right server (the number behind the name), and advertisers and banks would be forbidden from doing business with these companies.

If the government found a foreign site to be infringing under these bills, the government would try to make it disappear for US audiences.

If this bill becomes law, we will see the shuttering and/or financial starvation of thousands of websites—which are, of course, a form of speech and/or press. They would be silenced and/or starved based on either an affidavit by a rights holder, a mere suspicion by a business partner, or (at best!) a one-sided court hearing with a low burden of proof. Little wonder then that legal scholars from (my friend and) rising star Marvin Amorri to the legendary constitutional scholar Laurence H. Tribe (pdf) have concluded that the bills are unconstitutional threats to the First Amendment.

By now it should be clear that, if passed into law, SOPA or PIPA would have devastating consequences for innocent actors who are mistakenly identified. The web seizures undertaken by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), beginning in 2010, illustrate this peril all too well. Several websites have been taken down for posting media files that were authorized and even actively shared by the copyright holders or their representatives. Others have apparently been seized merely for linking to allegedly infringing content.

One in particular, DaJaz1.com, has become the cause célèbre of the anti-domain-seizures movement. It was one of a cluster of hip hop websites seized last year. Major voices from Vibe to Kanye to P. Diddy were actively promoting the sites, hardly a sign that they are dedicated to copyright infringement.

Last week, the feds finally gave up on DaJaz1. TechDirt (which has nearly gone all-SOPA, all-the-time) had the headline:

Feds Falsely Censor Popular Blog For Over A Year, Deny All Due Process, Hide All Details…

Their opening clarifies exactly how unconstitutional this is:

Imagine if the US government, with no notice or warning, raided a small but popular magazine’s offices over a Thanksgiving weekend, seized the company’s printing presses, and told the world that the magazine was a criminal enterprise with a giant banner on their building. Then imagine that it never arrested anyone, never let a trial happen, and filed everything about the case under seal, not even letting the magazine’s lawyers talk to the judge presiding over the case. And it continued to deny any due process at all for over a year, before finally just handing everything back to the magazine and pretending nothing happened. I expect most people would be outraged. I expect that nearly all of you would say that’s a classic case of prior restraint, a massive First Amendment violation, and exactly the kind of thing that does not, or should not, happen in the United States.

They go on to detail how DaJaz1’s owners were stonewalled, blockaded, and never allowed their day in court by the feds—for over a year—while the feds managed to arrange a court process during which all court proceedings (including several granting extensions that DaJaz1’s owners should have been able to contest) were secret and all the filings were sealed and not open to the site owners.

Once the details of the accusations came out, it turned out that the allegedly infringing songs were given directly to the blog by copyright holders’ agents in the hopes of promoting the music. The RIAA was the source of the original complaint, and one of the songs in question was not even released by an RIAA label.

Another operation using similar methods but for a different goal—seizing sites with child pornography—mistakenly took down 84,000 sites in one shot, resulting in each of those thousands of sites being down for 3 days. Even worse, each domain was redirected to an ICE notice that the website had been seized for trafficking in child pornography. Nearly all of those sites were not dedicated to child pornography, and to my knowledge, ICE never even apologized to them for the error.

Further, it takes little imagination to picture a devastating chill on legitimate sites that make fair uses of copyrighted content. If I run a news and commentary site, I may be less likely to include portions of copyrighted works, even if such inclusion is very likely fair use and crucially relevant to my discussion of the matters at hand.

In particular, media criticism sites would be in grave peril; how long after the bill’s passage would it be before partisan news outlets started using the new law to silence their critics? How long before FoxNews goes after Media Matters for America? Think that’s far fetched? Witness Righthaven’s efforts to sue bloggers for using even brief quotations. And what was on the list of threats they used to scare people into paying licensing fees? Domain seizure. Among other things, these bills would give a hunting license for those who would like to shutter the sites of upstarts, competitors, and critics.

At least these bills will stop piracy, right? Hardly.

Dedicated infringers will still find infringing sites—especially foreign sites that host infringing files with impunity. Remember, the feds are seizing the site name (e.g., Google.com) but not the number behind it (74.125.39.147). All you need is a small program to tell your computer to go to the right number—and, because the bill will forbid your ISP from getting you there, a proxy server in the middle. The same strategies have already proven successful for dissidents behind government firewalls, who still manage to upload and download forbidden information—despite far more active, on-the-fly, and resource-intensive censorship schemes.

Programmers have already developed tools to work around these restrictions. The law hasn’t even passed yet, and already there is a Firefox plugin that would help users work around SOPA-like restrictions.

You might think that at least payment processors and advertiser networks would be scared off of dealing with these sites. If it were that easy—if we could target the banks and advertisers that support internet scofflaws—then spam and other internet evils would have long since been wiped out.

The internet breeds decentralized innovation, and innovators will spring into action to help users circumvent ISP and search engine filters as well. This software will also be considered grounds for legal action—with the goal being to ban the tools, as the 1998 DMCA bans DRM-hacking devices. That’s worked so poorly that multiple free circumvention tools are available for most major DRM systems. There are so many DVD rippers that LifeHacker has a post comparing rippers to help you choose the best.

As if all of the above failures and offenses were not enough, these bills would harm our economy and reduce our competitiveness in the internet age. If SOPA were law when YouTube was getting started, the site probably would have been shuttered. The next YouTube will be much less likely to be born in the US if it can be kicked out of the legitimate portion of the web before it has really grown up. The EFF warns that sites like Etsy, Flickr, and Vimeo would be in danger.

Internet innovation is one of the few bright spots in the economy, and major internet firms have warned that this will increase the cost of regulatory compliance and decrease our competitiveness. Venture capitalists have also warned that SOPA would substantially decrease their willingness to invest in US technology start-ups. Union Square Ventures, just down the street here in NYC, even put this link saying the same thing on their homepage.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) has placed a hold on PROTECT-IP, and he has even vowed to filibuster the bill should it come to the Senate floor. Because of this principled opposition and his long record of standing up for internet freedom, I made a donation to Sen. Wyden’s re-election campaign—even though my wife and I are watching every dollar as we save to buy our first home.

So these bills are terrrrrible, but they enjoy a lot of support in the House and Senate—30 cosponsors in the House, and a whopping 40 in the Senate. This post is derived from an email I sent to my Senators and Representative, and all three wrote back with disappointing notes to the effect of, “Yeah, but we gotta stop internet infringement.” Surely this is unrelated to the content industries having spent far, far more money on lobbying and campaign donations than their opponents on this issue.

Which brings us back to democracy.

In response to these bills, we have seen the swelling of a major internet movement—nearly the groundswell we saw around network neutrality in 2006. Opponents created a campaign declaring November 16—the day of a hearing in the House that was heavily stacked in favor of SOPA—as “American Censorship Day,” a campaign that went viral in a major way. Over 6,000 sites including Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Mozilla (including the default start page in Firefox), Reddit, TechDirt, and BoingBoing, directed traffic to a single action site, AmericanCensorship.org. At the time, the site said that it had generated over 1,000,000 emails and four calls per second to Congress. To date, AmericanCensorship.org has earned over 650,000 Facebook likes and 63,000 tweets.

This is democracy in action. After all, most people don’t support draconian copyright enforcement, and a solid majority of people oppose government attempts to block access to infringing materials. (40% support, 56% oppose; this skews to 33% for, 64% against when framed as censorship.)

If Wyden’s hold and the opposition can stop this fast-moving train(wreck), then perhaps democratic values and majority opinion can actually shape the future of the internet. Just maybe, a public outcry can stop a terrible idea backed by special interests.

If not, we may be in big trouble—and not just because the internet will be broken.

In light of the revelations that Microsoft has been copying Google’s search results and feeding them into its Bing results, there’s a discussion about whether and how Google might seek a legal remedy. While “sue for copyright infringement” is perhaps a good default answer in internet law, I don’t think it’s the right one here. There may be other good options, though; I discuss one further below.

Senior Google Counsel William Patry knows a lot more about copyright than I ever will, but I’d be shocked if his team went into court with the claim that their search results are copyrightable. Copyright is only granted to creative expressions fixed in a tangible medium. Databases (compilations of data, including the association between various bits of data) are not subject to copyright unless there’s some creative expression involved, and then, only the creative expression is protected.

I think the clearest case law analogy here is Feist v. Rural, in which the defendant acknowledged having copied the plaintiff’s white pages. Still, the SCOTUS found unanimously for the defense. Why? Because there’s no creativity in collecting the data and alphabetizing the list of names. This is true even though several of the names were fake—and appeared in both the original and the copied version. Sound familiar?

The technology is different, but the legal question is remarkably similar. Google doesn’t create the websites to which it links, and it is exceptionally clear that the sorting that happens in the black box is fully automated and governed by complex equations. In other words, it’s like a much more complicated version of alphabetizing.

Imagine similar copying based on a sorting mechanism that is more complicated than alphabetical order but less complicated than Google search rankings—say, NFL quarterbacks’ passer ratings. If I were a sports blogger, I would have no compunction about copying the list of starters ranked by passer rating from the NFL.com site. Why? It’s just a list of which quarterbacks had which ratings, sorted by a somewhat complicated but ultimately mathematical rating. The NFL could sue me, but it would be pointless.

We don’t know how the math behind the search results and rankings work, but we do know that it’s an automatic process. Anybody who knows the formula could apply it and get the same results. This means the results aren’t sufficiently creative to be copyrightable. Even though Google’s search software is much more complicated, it’s probably best described as the legal equivalent of alphabetizing or ranking quarterbacks by formulaic passer ratings. I’m perhaps overstating the case, but on a scale from “Shakespeare” to “phone book,” search engine results are practically tripping on the white pages.

One might object, “But software is copyrightable!” Yes, software written by creative human programmers is copyrightable. This includes the code inside Google’s black box. But Bing didn’t copy the code. That would be infringement, not to mention a violation of trade secrets. Bing just copied the results–and not even whole hog, but as input for their own formula–and the results are not themselves a creative expression.

So where does that leave Google’s legal strategy? I know much less about this area of law, but I think they could go for the other default answer for internet law: “Sue for violating the clickwrap license.”

Here, the case law seems to be much more on their side. One reasonably analogous case is Register.com v. Verio. In this case, Plaintiff Register.com won an injunction against Verio for repeatedly and automatically harvesting subscriber data from Register.com’s site in violation of the terms of use.

The fit here is also not bad. Google’s Terms of Service forbid certain uses, including accessing any services “through any automated means (including use of scripts or web crawlers).” Even though the IE users themselves are not automatons, IE is, and apparently it’s serving as a web crawler, harvesting the data and sending it back to Redmond.

Funny coincidence that I’d pick this case, too. Read the slip opinion here (pdf), and check out the participating attorneys. Guess who was the lead attorney for Register.com, the victorious plaintiff… William Patry. Maybe I’m not so far off base here in predicting a Register v. Verio-based strategy.

Google may well let Bing’s actions speak for themselves and avoid the legal route altogether. That’s a fine PR strategy, and suing also may not be worth the political cost of giving fodder to Google’s opponents on other issues down the road. But if they want to sue, I think copyright is a terrible route, while breach of contract may be a good route.

There are still other legal options, to be sure. But as “Chainsaw” Dan Snyder reminds us, suing isn’t always the best option.

It’s an official US government document, so copyright does not apply–at least not in the US. (See 17 USC § 105.) It’s galling, then, that the official White House Flickr account has been adding language incorrectly claiming copyright-like restrictions on pictures.

The language reads:

This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

The only true part of the statement is that the photo may not be used to suggest commercial or political endorsement. The rest is balderdash.

You can print a thousand posters of this picture and sell them for profit. [Ed. Feb. 13: MAYBE. See below.] You can crop out Joe Biden’s face, insert your own, and use that for your Facebook profile picture. You can print a photobook using this and dozens of other official photos. It would be polite to credit photographer Pete Souza, but even that’s not required.

Just don’t do anything that implies endorsement of your product or political cause. (For instance, don’t sell your poster as an official White House poster.)

I’m sad to see yet another instance of the administration not delivering the government transparency we were promised. Willfully misrepresenting the law to constituents is bad form indeed.

Of course, it’s nothing compared to the fiasco that is the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. The negotiations continue, with the goal of a signed treaty this year, but ACTA draft proposals remain “classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12598.”

It’s enough to make willful misrepresentation of the law look downright charming.

[Ed. Feb. 13: Here's where "I'm not a lawyer" should just be auto-added to the top of all my posts. There's no FEDERAL law that would keep you from reproducing and even selling government document photographs. There is, however, a state law issue of the "Right of Publicity."

I think some applications of this right can be troublesome, but others make good sense. In any case, I failed to account for it in the first version of this post. Here's a good post discussing the frequent uses of Obama's image as a question of the right of publicity.

Short version: Politicians have a right of publicity according to state rights, though uses are more likely to raise First Amendment concerns, and enforcement is such a PR nightmare that it almost never happens. Which is why I was able to buy Obama handpuppets at the inauguration--and why you'd still be effectively able to sell your posters, but it may technically be illegal depending on your state's law, and an attorney would likely discourage you from doing so.

But it's still 100% legal to photoshop your face over Biden's and use that as your Facebook profile. In fact, I have Photoshop...]

I had a rollicking good time, the questions were awesome, and the post-talk celebration was even better. If you want the Powerpoint, it’s here in all its 12.2 MB glory.

Further discussion welcome.

Professor Lessig likes to introduce three ideas to frame his talk today: 1) influence, 2) independence and 3) responsibility.

Relying on his framework of the four modalities of control that he used in Code, Professor Lessig explains how the law, markets, norms and architecture together exert influence, and that depending on your policy objectives, these four forces can be complementing or conflicting. He suggests that together they form an “economy of influence” that we need to understand if we want to make effective policy.

He continues to explain “independence”, in the sense that something is not dependent on something. Independence matters, because it means that you try to find the right answer for the right reason, as opposed to doing so for a wrong reason you might be dependent on.

Independence, however, does not mean dependence from everything. Lessig reframes independence as a “proper dependence”. In legal terms, it means that a judge depends on the law for her judgment. So independence is about defining proper dependence, and limiting improper dependence.

Responsibility is the third concept Lessig goes into. He tells us about a case he represented in 2006: Hardwicke vs ABS. It was a case that focused on a series of events concerning child abuse, all perpetrated by a single person. The question that was raised: Who is responsible? Lessig makes the argument that responsibility does not lie with the individual, that this individual has no power to reform, and that this is pathological. Instead, he makes the case that responsibility in this case is all the people who knew about the wrongdoings, but refused to pick up the phone. Nevertheless, the focus of the law was on the one pathological person. Lessig suggests it is more productive to focus responsibility on those who have the power to make changes, instead of those are pathological and are not in a position to reform. He notes it is ironic that the one person who is least likely to reform is held responsible, while the one entity who could do something about it, was immune.

He raises another example of “responsibility” gone awry. He cites Al Gore and his book “The Assault on Reason”, and lambasts its narrow perception of responsibility. It focuses on former president Bush, arguably the man least likely to reform, and instead forgets those who could have done something about it, suggesting that they also have been critically responsible.

His argument is one of “institutional corruption”. What it is not: what happened with Blagojevitch; it is not bribery, not “just politics”, not any violation of existing rules. Instead, institutional corruption is “a certain kind of influence situated within an economy of influence that has a certain effect, either it 1) weakens the effectiveness of the institution or 2) weakens public trust for the institution.

He explains the system of institutional corruption using the White House. Referring to Robert Kaiser’s book “So Damn Much Money”, he argues how the story of the government has dramatically changed in the past fifteen years and how the engine of this change has been the growth of the lobbying industry. He illustrates this with numbers: Lobbyists pay with cash which members use as support for their campaigns. The cost of campaigns have exploded over the years, and subsequently, members have become dependent on lobbyists for cash – he cites that lobbyists make up 30-70% of campaign budgets! This is not new, he carefully explains, but citing Kaiser again, what is new is the scale of this practice has gotten out of hand. Members /need/ and take /much more/, becoming /dependent/ on those who supply. This is only during the tenure, but institutional corruption also needs to be understood as something after tenure: 50% of senators translate their senate tenure into a career as lobbyist, while 42% of the house do the same. This suggests a business model, focused on life after government, that perpetuates itself, and influential people who end up becoming dependent on this system surviving, both during and after their time in Congress.

He goes on to give example after example of institutional corruption. He mentions the important work done by maplight.org that tracks money in politics, who have shown that members who voted to gut a bill had 3x times the contribution from lobbyists than those who voted against. Simply put, policies get bent to those who pay. He cites a study by Alexander, Scholz and Mazza measuring rates of return for lobbying expenditures, who conclude that ROI is a whopping 22,000%! He again cites Kaiser, who suggests that lobbying is a $9-12 billion industry.

Why does this matter? It matters if it
1) weakens effectiveness of institution or
2) weakens public trust of institution

In the first case, he argues how lobbying can shift policy. He cites a study by Hall and Deardorff “Lobbying as Legislative Subsidy” on how the work of congresspersons shift as a result of lobbying. Imagine you’re a congressperson and you see it as your goal to work on two issues: one is to stop piracy, the other is to help mums on welfare. The line of lobbyists that will happily help you with stopping piracy is long, whereas not so many will help you with the latter – so work of the congressperson shifts, and thus work of Congress shifts.

Lessig suggests it also bends policies. Does money really not change results? Citing the Sonny Bono case of October 27, 1998, he shows how in copyright lobbying power had a powerful influence in getting the copyright term extended for another twenty years. Does this advance the public good? A clear no. Lessig backs this up by telling how in the challenge at the Supreme Court, an impressive line-up of Nobel Prize winning economists, including Milton Friedman, supported this and that it would be a “no brainer” to sign the support that copyright extension did not advance the public good. But he concludes that there were “no brains” in the House. An easy case of institutional corruption. There are two explanations: Either they are idiots, or they are guided by something other than reason. He suggests of course it’s the latter. It is not misunderstanding that explains these cases.

Lessig continues to explain how corruption can be seen as weakening public trust. He tells us about how the head of the committee in charge of deciding the future of healthcare is getting $4 million from the healthcare industry. Or how a congressperson ended up opposing the public option even though the majority of his constituency supports it. The idea is not that there might be a direct link between the money and the vote, but that if you take money to do something that is against the public interest, people will automatically make that link, and this weakens public trust. If you don’t take money and you go against the popular vote, that won’t reek of corruption.

Lessig goes on to discuss different fields: medicine and the healthcare industry, citing research by Drummond Rennie from UCSF that shows how there is an overwhelming bias in favor of sponsor’s company drugs. How there are 2.5 doctors to 1 detailer (a detailer being someone who is like a lobbyist for the pharmaceuticals, promoting the drugs to doctors, often giving “gifts”). How the budget for detailing tripled in the past ten years.

Lessig asks us: how can we find out whether these claims are true? Do detailing practices either weaken the effectiveness of medicine, or weaken the public trust for it? What would it take to know?

There is also the issue of “the structure of fact finding” that Lessig suggests is corrupt. Again, he argues we need to understand whether this is a process by which results are affected or trust is weakened. He cites how sponsor funded research can cause delay, and mentions the case of “popcorn lung”.

Lessig makes a strong case that we need more than intuition. That we need a framework or metric to know for sure. Because we all have ideological commitments, that we need to escape this in order to have a proper understanding of corruption. This is, in short, the aim of his new project: The Lab. It should be a neutral ground with a framework that determines whether and when institutional corruption exists, to develop remedies for institutional corruption when it exists. He sees the initial work having three dimensions: 1) data – necessary to describe influence and track its change; 2) perception of institutional corruption and understand how it has changed;
and 3) causation – what can we say about what causes what in these contexts in alleged corruption. Having this information, we can then design remedies.

He also posted a PDF of the relevant section. See the highlighted portion on page 9 for the nondiscrimination requirements.

Over at Public Knowledge, Daniel McCartney’s take is that HBO is trying to own history. I’d have to agree.

As McCartney points out, HBO’s copyright claim is dubious at best–and that’s without even considering fair use–but the DMCA takedown notice system rewards over-enforcement. Generally, a (real or alleged) copyright holder says “Take this down,” the site complies, and that’s the end of the story.

In a more recent development, HBO was apparently shamed into changing their mind. Some clips are still down (like this one), but others remain.

For instance, here’s an amateur recording of Bishop Gene Robinson’s invocation:

Also, there’s even a professional recording of the coveted Pete Seeger/Bruce Springsteen performance of “This Land is Your Land”. Judging by the titling, this was made for or repurposed by a station broadcasting in another country.

For those whose clips get taken down, note that you might get Google (who owns YouTube) to re-upload the clip by filing a counter-claim.

IMPORTANT: If you file a counter-claim, you’re basically daring HBO to actually sue you, though considering their change of heart, the odds of a real suit seem slim. Depending on the clip, it’s a risk I might take, but I don’t expect everyone to agree.

This is why the DMCA takedown system rewards over-enforcement. The people on the “Take that down!” end of the transaction already have a team of lawyers, while those on the “Where the heck is my clip?” end generally don’t know their legal rights and don’t have the money to hire a lawyer.

On an unrelated note–the “This Land” performance–listen carefully to the lyrics. Note that two of the verses from Woody Guthrie’s original version are pretty socialist. These are generally omitted from the version taught in primary schools. Seeger and Springstein appeared to take particular pleasure in singing the full song.

Conveniently, Ed Felten wrote it for me.

Props to EFF for the link.

Out of dissatisfaction with the very high prices and very poor customer service of SPSS ($200 for Grad Pack v. 11, another $200 for v. 16, only to be told that the ridiculous number of bugs in v. 16 would only be solved in future releases–requiring yet another license), I’ve been thinking I should fully migrate to R but have done little in this direction. Then, I discovered this Times story about R software, complete with glowing reviews from people at big deal companies–for instance, Hal Varian, chief economist at Google.

R is a little intimidating for those not entirely at home with non-graphic computing interfaces (think DOS instead of Windows) and those who know little about statistics. For a teaching situation in a resource-strapped environment, for instance, these are not insurmountable obstacles. I would still recommend R as rather usable given a little patience for anybody who needs to do serious data analysis, and it’s even usable in almost any teaching environment that requires anything more sophisticated than Excel.

For texts, Stine used John Fox’s Applied Regression (now in a 2d edition) with his R and S Plus Companion. This text was quite helpful, and while I’m particularly enthusiastic to try new software and fairly good at learning statistics, I think everyone caught on and got a lot out of the class. More importantly than the software package, we all learned a lot about the process of data analysis using regression, and in my case, this knowledge has stayed with me even as I’ve used SPSS for the past few years.

One of the best parts about using R was that we used Fox’s “Companion to Applied Regression” (CAR) package, which was highly tailored to the kinds of work we did in the class. (See John Fox’s homepage for this and other helpful links, including a similar summer quickie class that Fox taught.) Think of it as a plugin. 

SPSS charges outrageous prices for their Regression package (less so when bundled with the Grad Pack, but still), but this was free–and, in my opinion, superior on most counts. This add-on is just one of thousands available, all for free. As the Times notes, a lot of the R packages are tailored to exceptionally complicated tasks, such as econometrics and biostatistics.

This is how open source software gets popular. Once you have a critical mass of users who are invested enough to do some work to improve a package, the distributed innovation can quickly outpace the work done at the labs behind even expensive proprietary software. See Benkler’s Wealth of Networks for more on this.

As for me, I’m seriously bunkered into SPSS for my dissertation research–it’s easier to work around the bugs for now than to re-learn an entirely new package–so I’m not making the 2-footed jump for a good bit. The article reminded me to download R, though, and I’ll get back into it very soon, I’m sure.

If I can get better software for free, why not?