統計トピックスNo.127「丑（うし）年生まれ」と「新成人」の人口

私は今年に入って翻訳書を出してから、泥縄式的に辞書を引く、というより日常的に毎日読むようになった。先日、その経緯については書いたのだが、今回は私が目下、愛読している辞書について。過去に使ってきた辞書は私の場合、白水社のものと旺文社のものが多かった。今回、私が愛読しているのは旺文社のNouveau Petit Royal（第三刷）という仏和辞典である。愛読している、というより実質的にノートにほとんど丸写ししているのだが、と言ってもアルファベットのAから順番にやるというようなことはできないし、飽きてしまうので、私の場合はサイコロ賭博のようにぱっと開いて気の向いた単語から書き写していき、筆写が終わったら蛍光ペンでしるしを付けて置く。

2020 saw governments on three continents take action against the dominance of the biggest tech platforms, with a flurry of pro-competition rules, investigations and lawsuits. As exciting as this is, it's just the beginning. Antitrust enforcement is often a matter of years or even decades, and if history is any judge, dominant companies will seek to avert precedent-setting judgments (which might lead to breakups) and instead try to settle their lawsuits, negotiating concessions rather than taking their chances before a judge.

As an organization that yearns for the days when the Internet wasn't a group of five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four, we are excited to see this kind of enforcement underway, but that excitement is tempered by the fear that hasty, reflexive settlements and regulations might actually make the situation worse. For example, deputizing companies to perform the duties of the state by identifying and blocking unlawful speech makes it harder for new, better companies to enter the marketplace, because they can't afford the vast army of moderators that monopolists can pay for with the change they find down the back of the sofa in their campus mini-kitchens.

Interoperability Mandates

Thankfully, 2020 saw some very thoughtful approaches to competition that explicitly sought out ways to promote competition and give users more power over how their tech works, rather than blindly "punishing" companies with regulations that also raise barriers for would-be challengers. Both the U.S. Access Act and the EU Digital Services Act propose interoperability mandates—a requirement that the biggest tech companies provide managed access to their systems for startups, co-ops, and other potential competitors.

When it comes to undoing 40 years of indifferent antitrust enforcement, interoperability mandates are a great start, but they are only part of the solution. What happens if the mandatory system is sidelined by changing market conditions or deliberate subversion by monopolistic companies? And what about new technologies just a-borning: what can we do to prevent them from growing into monopolies, and starting the cycle over again?

The Good Kind of Tech Exceptionalism

There are lots of ways in which tech monopolies are unexceptional: just like many other concentrated industries, their growth was fueled by access to lots of capital, which allowed them to gobble up small companies before they could grow to be competitors; they engaged in mergers between notional competitors, making it harder for suppliers, customers, and workers to shop around for better deals; and they created vertical monopolies that cornered multiple markets.

But tech is exceptional, because it is based on universal machines (computers) and a universal network (the Internet), and that opens up the possibility of a different kind of interoperability—not the kind that is designed in from the start through standards, nor the kind imposed by a lawmaker.

Rather, this is adversarial interoperability, when you plug something in against the wishes of the person who made it, to make life better for the people who use it.

We have a name for this: Competitive Compatibility (ComCom for short).

ComCom

ComCom is deeply embedded in the history of tech. Every one of today's tech giants has a ComCom story in its history, like Apple's elegant solution to Microsoft's unreliable Office for Mac products.

But as scrappy firms become powerful incumbents, their relationship to ComCom changes: when they were using ComCom to outmaneuver the lumbering dinosaurs of a previous era, that was just “progress.” When some upstart comes along to do the same to them, that's a dangerous and illegitimate challenge to the natural order of things.

When it comes to getting their own way, monopolies have two major advantages: first, they have the extra profits that come from monopolization ("monopoly rents" in economics jargon); and second, the more concentrated an industry is, the easier it is for all the major companies in it to collude to spend those monopoly rents to buy policies that safeguard their profits.

For decades, the pirates of yore have declared themselves to be admirals and have set about ensuring that no one does unto them what they have done unto so many others. To that end, we've seen the steady expansion of cybersecurity law, copyright and para-copyright law, and patent law (as well as frightening new theories of copyright that make it much harder to use ComCom to help users escape walled gardens, lock-ins, and other anti-competitive tricks that help monopolists do monopoly.)

Telling the Tale

We spent much of 2019 and 2020 gathering and publishing the largely forgotten histories of ComCom in tech development, from the early cable TV systems all the way to the birth of fintech.

Now it's time to mobilize. As 2021's crackdowns on monopoly proceed, lawmakers, courts, and regulators will be looking for solutions. We think ComCom should be in their toolkits: we imagine courts correcting monopoly abuses by prohibiting big companies from using legal tools to fight ComCom, and governments insisting on guarantees that ComCom will be tolerated by anyone selling products to the public sector. We’d also like to see legislatures adopt rules to promote ComCom, including reforms to copyright, cybersecurity, patent, and other laws that safeguard those who make new things that connect the old.

It's nearly 2021, and long past time for a revival of the trustbusting spirit. But it's also been 130 years since America's seminal antitrust laws were passed, and so it's also long past time to adopt some new tactics to fight the eternal problem of monopoly abuse.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2020.

EFF works in state legislatures across the country to fight for your civil liberties. This year, the pandemic upended the priorities and plans of every statehouse. But, with your support, EFF was able to quickly respond to surveillance threats, defend privacy, and counter the ways the pandemic made matters worse.  Here are some highlights of our work—both in California and beyond.

Fighting Government Face Surveillance

After 2018 and 2019, which saw cities including San Francisco and Oakland passing municipal bans on government use of face recognition, many state lawmakers took notice of the growing momentum around this dangerous technology.

Unfortunately, not all of their ideas were good.

In California, EFF joined a broad coalition of civil liberties, civil rights, and labor advocates to oppose A.B. 2261, which proposed weak regulation of face surveillance. Modeled after a similar bill enacted in Washington state—a measure EFF and other civil liberties groups opposed—this bill threatened to normalize the increased use of face surveillance of Californians where they live and work.  Our allies included the ACLU of California, Oakland Privacy, the California Employment Lawyers Association, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) of California, and California Teamsters. This wide-ranging group illustrated how many people recognize the threat of face surveillance to their communities.

We continue to work with lawmakers across the country who are pushing for bills that would end government face surveillance at the state and city level. And we encourage communities across the country to join this movement with our About Face campaign. Take this opportunity to advocate for the end of government use of this harmful technology in your own neighborhoods.

Standing Up for Strong Privacy

Consumer data privacy continued to be a major focus for legislators and voters in 2020, both as it related to the pandemic and as a more general issue. The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect at the start of the year. More changes are coming because California’s voters enacted Proposition 24, which amended the CCPA. EFF did not take a position on that mixed bag of steps forward, steps back, and missed opportunities. Proposition 24 goes into effect in 2023, and CCPA remains the law until then. We will work to ensure pro-privacy implementation of Proposition 24, and continue to fight for strong privacy laws.

There are a lot of weak privacy bills out there. EFF again opposed Washington’s “Privacy Act,” which failed to pass the state’s legislature for the second year in a row. The bill received widespread support from big tech companies. It’s no wonder they like this weak, token effort at reining in corporations’ rampant misuse of personal data. We expect privacy to be at issue again in Washington, where lawmakers are strongly influenced by tech companies in their backyard.

Back in California, EFF stood against A.B. 2004, which would have laid the groundwork for an ill-considered blockchain-based system for “immunity passports.” Specifically, the bill directed the state to set up a verified health credential that shows the results of someone’s last COVID-19 test, for purposes of restricting  access to public places. EFF believes that people should not be forced to present health data on their smartphones to enter public places. By claiming that blockchain technology was part of a unique solution to the public health crisis, A.B. 2004 was opportunism at its worst. We were proud to stand against this bill with allies including Mozilla and the ACLU of California. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it.

We also called on Gov. Newsom to add necessary privacy protections to any pandemic response program. The California legislature failed to pass a pair of bills (A.B. 660 and A.B. 1782) that would have instituted important privacy guardrails on contact tracing programs. We will continue to work on this issue in the coming year.

Expanding Broadband Access

EFF was proud to co-sponsor California S.B. 1130, by Sen. Lena Gonzalez, which would have paved the way for state-financed networks with bandwidth to handle Internet traffic for decades to come. Expanding broadband access, particularly fiber, is key. Fiber-to-the-home is the best option for California’s future, as EFF explained in a filing to the California Public Utilities Commission.

S.B. 1130 passed the Senate 30-9 and had the support of Gov. Newsom. Yet, with just hours left in this year’s legislative session, the California Assembly refused to hear SB 1130, or any deal, to expand broadband access—without any explanation to the more than 50 groups that supported this bill.

But we’re not giving up. In fact, we’ve continued to build our coalition demanding greater broadband access. On December 7, the first day of the California legislature’s new session, Sen. Gonzalez filed S.B. 4, which shares the same core principles as S.B. 1130.

If you are a California business, non-profit, local elected official, or anchor institution, please sign on in support of S.B. 4. EFF will include you in a letter to update the legislature of how wide and deep current support is for this legislation. Dozens of organizations and elected officials have endorsed this bill with more to come. Join us!

We’re talking to lawmakers in other states who are also interested in overhauling their Internet infrastructure. The weaknesses of many networks have become crystal clear as more people work from home and attend school entirely online.

Looking Ahead

The pandemic and the many ways it affects digital liberties will continue to be a main focus in many legislatures. EFF will continue to work with state lawmakers across the country to enact laws to expand consumer protections and access to critical technologies, to ensure that civil liberties are part of any pandemic response, and to oppose federal efforts to take away rights in states that have passed strong laws.

This article is part of our Year in Review series. Read other articles about the fight for digital rights in 2020.

　新型コロナウイルス感染症のパンデミックで、世界スポーツは長い休眠状態に陥った。　世界保健機構（ＷＨＯ）は中国での感染拡大で１月末に緊急事態を宣言し、３月初めにはパンデミックを宣言した。　日本政府は、４月に非常事態宣言し、その後、解除したが、感染は拡大する一方である。年末までに世界の感染者は、８０００万人を超え、死者は１７５万人以上となった。　日本でも感染者は２２万人を超え、死者は３３００人に達した。感染拡大防止策で、各国で、出入国制限や移動規制、外出自粛、日常生活での密閉、..