Cato Daily Dispatch for October 3, 2003
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Senate Panel Opposes Amtrak OverhaulU.S. Appeals Court Nominee Clears Senate Hurdle
Lone File-swapper Takes On Recording Industry
Senate Panel Opposes Amtrak Overhaul
According to The Washington Post, "The Bush administration's plan to restructure Amtrak ran into nearly universal bipartisan opposition yesterday from a Senate committee, and Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said he fears Congress will continue to subsidize the passenger railroad's losses while demanding no basic changes in how it operates."
According to a Cato Policy Analysis "Help Passenger Rail by Privatizing Amtrak," by Joseph Vranich, a former member of the Amtrak Reform Council and Adjunct Scholar Edward L. Hudgins, "most Amtrak trains outside of a few high-density, short-distance corridors are a throwback to days gone by. The railroad does not now contribute much to America's mobility, and its future plans, although expensive, spell more of the same. History is clear that increasing subsidies to Amtrak will not solve Amtrak's problems. The nation must create a public-private rail franchise program and eliminate disincentives to private companies that may be interested in taking over promising Amtrak routes."
"The federal government does not run a national airline. It does not operate a national bus company. The justification for a national passenger railroad has evaporated."
"If ever there was a time for a true reform of rail passenger service, the time is now."
U.S. Appeals Court Nominee Clears Senate Hurdle
"The Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee voted 10-9 Thursday to send the full Senate the controversial re-nomination of U.S. District Judge Charles Pickering to serve on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which serves Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas," the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, though a filibuster remains likely.
"When Democrats controlled the committee in March 2002, they killed the Mississippian's nomination for promotion to the 5th Circuit appeals post by an identical 10-9 party-line split."
James Swanson, editor in chief of the Cato Supreme Court Review, writes in "Minority Rules" that "[not all] filibusters raise constitutional questions. There is a long history of their use in the legislative context, and they can serve a legitimate purpose by not foreclosing debate on legislation prematurely. But in the executive context, when presidential appointments are at issue, filibustering appellate nominees is an unprecedented, though still not necessarily unconstitutional, step. If employed merely to guarantee a reasonable and limited period of debate before proceeding to an up or down vote, a brief filibuster might pass constitutional muster. But ... when the filibuster is being used not to debate, but to kill nominations by denying the majority its right to consent to them, serious constitutional issues arise."
Lone File-swapper Takes On Recording Industry
According to CNET News.com, "an anonymous California computer user went to court on Thursday to challenge the recording industry's file-trading subpoenas, charging that they are unconstitutional and violate her right to privacy."
"The legal motion, filed in Washington, D.C., federal court by a 'Jane Doe' Internet service subscriber, is the first from an individual whose personal information has been subpoenaed by the Recording Industry Association of America in recent months."
In "Policing Pirates in the Networked Age," University of Texas at Dallas economics professor Stan Liebowitz argues that unlike previous copying technologies, "current technologies for distributing pirated material appear capable of destroying the value of copyright." However, he points out that the evidence does not support the idea that Napster, a music file-swapping service, had a negative impact on the compact disc industry.
"By crippling Napster," Liebowitz writes, "copyright holders may have strengthened a far more fearsome foe" in the form of Gnutella-like peer-to-peer systems that, unlike Napster, cannot be used to appropriate royalties by copyright holders. Liebowitz proposes that a market-based digital rights management scheme "can ameliorate copyright harms by making it more difficult to make unauthorized copies."
Jonathan Block, editor, jblock@cato.org
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