Mark Kleiman on radio discussion of Mexican 'decriminalization':

We were there to talk about decriminalization, by God, and if decriminalization wasn't actually happening that was an interesting sidelight on the story but mustn't be allowed to interfere with the narrative, either for those who wanted to view with alarm or those who wanted to point with pride. ... As I take it, the moral of the story is that in the contemporary media/political culture opinion and spin float free of mere fact.

Read the whole thing. Funny!

Commenter Fitz is taking a lot of heat at Feministe for comments like this one, where he says that unless pro-contraception folks can defend an ethics of sexuality of their own, they will have no credibility with traditionalists. I think there's something to this, so let me see if I can gloss it in a way that is less contentious.

One can have both a political theory and a comprehensive moral theory that cover sexuality. A liberal would think it proper for one's political theory to be much thinner than one's comprehensive theory; there are a lot of bad things that the state ought nevertheless leave alone. As a political theory, "whatever N consenting adults want is okay" seems pretty darn good to me, in the sense that the state should not pass judgment beyond ensuring that this minimal bar is met. But I seriously doubt most of us think that's good enough to qualify as a fullblown theory of sexual morality; I at least have qualms, and I'm pretty darn libertine.

Some of us might believe that sex is only okay in loving relationships; some of us might think it depends on a certain matching of viewpoints such that casual sex might be okay with someone but not with someone else. Some of us might think that sexual acts that reify patriarchal gender roles are morally problematic; certainly, authors with impeccable feminist credentials have made such claims. Indeed, it is precisely because one is against certain conceptions of female sexuality that one might object to a hypothetical traditionalist couple who (consensually, mutually) viewed sex as the paradigm of wifely submission to her husband's authority. There's nothing incoherent, of course, about a comprehensive theory that ends up with consent and nothing else as the criteria for rightness. But such a theory must be defended against all comers; not just traditionalist natural-law types, but radicals, too, who might object to expressions of sexuality that seem to deny the partners' equal moral status.

This doesn't imply anything, per se, about what one should do with one's moral objections, should one have them; one could believe, with Mill, that even social pressure might be too coercive to be legitimately employed in changing others' practices. But that doesn't mean the moral theory has disappeared; it's still there, or ought to be, in one's mind.

Why care? Obviously, no one can be expected to have a fully worked-out, eight-chapter dissertation mapping out their comprehensive theory of sexual morality; I don't think even Fitz expects this. But I think he's right to imply that those who do have firmly held convictions about sexual ethics will be more likely to accept our political morality if they believe we have a comprehensive theory that undergirds it--even if they disagree vehemently with that theory. Insisting, instead, that sex is a morality-free zone, that anything goes once one has consent, is a much riskier proposition--unless one can back this up with good arguments, one risks being seen as an utterly amoral person, one whose views about political morality, therefore, can be safely ignored.

This snarky little NYT piece about the proposed French anti-DRM law is an example of why caring about 'intellectual property' policy is depressing.

Here's how the story is being spun in the mainstream press: those regulation-crazy French are at it again! Jealous as always of American success, they're about to enact a law that forces Apple to let its competitors play iTunes songs on their own mp3 players. Sadly, this is how the author of the Times piece, a professor at Chicago's GSB no less, describes the situation. He goes on to decry this interference, saying essentially that Apple needs to be able to tie iTunes customers to their iPods, because only then will they sell enough iPods to finance improvements to iTunes.

Here's what's actually happening in France, which bears little resemblance to the story told above. (I'd urge you all to read this detailed examination of the law by a prominent French computer scientist.) The first thing to realize is that all this Apple stuff is a sideshow. The bill is mainly about making it illegal to use, create, or distribute software that breaks digital locks (DRM, digital rights management). We in the US already have a law that does this, the DMCA, and as Tim Lee eloquently shows, it does nothing to prevent piracy while doing quite a bit to chill innovation and competition. If Ford wants to sell you a car that will only run on Ford gasoline, that's fine. But it is not okay at all to pass a law that makes it illegal to open up the hood and tinker with your car to see whether you can make it better, which is what we're talking about here (analogy from Cory).

So how does iTunes fit into this? Basically, people complained. Other countries' experience with DMCA-type legislation has shown that it's all about restricting interoperability and competition (as Prof. Goolsbee implicitly acknowledges). So amendments to the law were suggested that would make breaking locks for the purpose of interoperability legal, and indeed force lock-makers to help those who wished to do this. (Incidentally, these portions of the bill have now been significantly watered down.)

Now, I think this is a bad way of handling the problem. Circumvention for interoperability should be legal, but mandating disclosure is an intrusive and heavy-handed response. I can see why one might want to do it--it would foreclose possibly-wasteful DRM arms-races--but it still seems like an overbroad, statist reaction. But let's not lose sight of the big picture--it's a statist, clumsy attempt to mandate a little competition in one small industry segment ... buried inside a much larger, more clumsy, and equally statist attempt to crush competition through legally-protected DRM.

So. If the US were implementing a treaty that would make make mandatory professional licensure for all occupations, but as part of the implementing legislation inserted a clause regulating professional associations so that their membership standards were transparent to everyone, and you were to write an editorial blasting Congress for its interference with the free market, would you complain about the way the law destroys the right to pursue a livelihood without asking permission, or would you complain about the burden of transparency on membership groups' free association? The latter, it seems, if you're Austan Goolsbee.