Think tanks like Heartland and their ties with Microsoft: What everybody should know

LXer Feature: 27-May-06 Recently, Mr. Steven Titch wrote an article about Open Document which contained Microsoft-style disinformation. At that moment, some of our readers suggested Heartland or Mr. Titch might have been funded by Microsoft. While I couldn't find any direct ties, there are lot of indirect ties between the Heartland Institute and Microsoft, and at a certain point in my research, even the name of Mr. Abramoff showed up. A summary of the things I found.

When Don Parris, Editor in Chief of LXer, in his article replied to Mr. Titch, some people said he put too much effort in it, because no one would take Titch serious. However, it seems there are a lot of politicians who read the so called 'research' of the Heartland institute. Therefore, we can't simply ignore this institute, but instead, we should show the subjectivity of the Heartland institute and its ties with Microsoft.

First of all, we can't know for sure the Heartland Institute is funded by Microsoft. The Heartland institute is a 501(c)(3), and therefore, they don't have to publish where there money comes from. They only have to publish where it goes to. They used to publish where their money comes from, but they stopped since january 2005 doing so, because, as the Heartland institute site says

"People who disagree with our views have taken to selectively disclosing names of donors who they think are unpopular in order to avoid addressing the merits of our positions. Listing our donors makes this unfair and misleading tactic possible. By not disclosing our donors, we keep the focus on the issue.

Indeed, it could be that if people discover the Heartland Institute has directors who are also working for ExxonMobil, General Motors and PhillipMorris, people take their so called 'research' about tobacco issues and climate change less serious. However, it seems neither Mr. Titch, nor the Heartland Institute is directly paid by Microsoft (Let's make this clear: no accusations here).

Maybe it's a good idea to note Steven Titch has a company called Expert Editorial Inc.. The site states:
Expert Editorial currently works with major non-profit think tanks such the Heartland Institute and the Reason Foundation to provide policy analysis, commentary, and research reports in support of free-market telecommunications and IT policy solutions..

Looking at the Reason Foundation website, we see Microsoft is one of their corporate supporters. However, this doesn't prove anything, but we should note it anyway.

According to the footer of Mr. Titch's article, Mr. Titch is senior fellow for IT and telecom policy at The Heartland Institute and managing editor of IT&T News, and therefore, it would be interesting to look at the other writers of Heartland's IT&T news.

First, we find an article called "Anti-Trust or Anti-Americanism?", by Sonia Arrison, director of technology studies at the Pacific Research Institute. It is the first article about the MS vs. EC case which nowhere mentions the word 'monopoly'(!), which is the reason the EC started a case against MS. However, the article cries about how 'Success can be dangerous', and how the EU forces MS to give up their Intellectual Property (IP).

Of course, the IP sentiments are false if we make a comparison to something less abstract: Let's think of a screw. The value of the screw is in the metal and its physical properties, not in its sizes which comply with some international ISO standards. Because those standards are ISO approved, any manufacturer can make a screw complying with those ISO standards, and manufacturers have to compete on the physical (and maybe chemical) properties, and on the price. If we compare the Intellectual Property of Microsoft's standards, it is like making a screw, but not telling its measures (like the SMB protocol), even keeping them secret, and when people try to measure the screw (reverse engineering), calling on the DCMA to stop them. Microsoft now claims their intellectual property is in the 'sizes of the screws' (closed standards) instead of the screws (software) themselves. If you can't make better screws and only rely on the secrecy of the sizes of the screws, it looks to me like you have a problem, especially when someone else (Samba and OpenOffice for example) makes screws with the same physical properties.

Curious where the the funds of this Pacific Research Institute come from, I found a site called Sourcewatch.org, which proved to be a great site for this kind of research by the way. And you guessed it right, Microsoft is one of their donors.

The next interesting article, "Platforms, Interoperability, and IPR", is written by James V. DeLong, senior fellow and director at the Progress & Freedom Foundation. Mr. DeLong tries to convince us, interoperability breaches intellectual property. "Interoperability is not synonymous with interchangability. Any situation that demands platform suppliers give away underlying intellectual property in order to allow a competitor to create what is essentially a generic duplicate, undermines the value of the intellectual capital used to create the platform and any products or services that use it", he says.

Yes, you guessed right: the Progress & Freedom Foundation is sponsored by the usual suspects: MS, Intel, Disney, Google, Apple, Verisign...

Looking for more 'suspicious' articles, I came across a story called "Free' Software Isn't Free", by Steve DelBianco, representing the Association for Competitive Technology and the NetChoice Coalition. Everybody at Lxer knows it should read Free (like in freedom) software isn't free (like in beer), so this is no news to us. Listen to what this person has to tell us:

"Finally, in an era of viruses, worms, and spyware, IT security has never been more important. State IT directors must be confident that any software deployed in state government will be adequately protected from threats to security and information privacy. Software that’s downloaded and deployed without state approval could compromise the security of sensitive citizen information such as Social Security numbers or health records."

Yes, he is implying free software without state approval could open the gate for worms, viruses and spyware, thereby also implying the current approved software doesn't suffer from it. A great piece of misinformation, since almost anyone knows there have only been two viruses/worms which targeted Linux in the wild, and spyware is much more difficult to write because for Linux than for Window because of the permissions. When claiming that open source software might suffer from viruses, worms and spyware and not mentioning that Microsoft Windows currently is the only operating system in the world which suffers from this malware, you can predict who is one of the companies bringing in funds for the Association for Competitive Technology. And indeed, like you would have guessed, Microsoft is one of the sponsors.

Then, things became even more interesting when I found out the Heartland Institute also publishes books. One of the books they published is called "Antitrust after Microsoft : The Obsolescence of Antitrust in the Digital Era" and is written by David B. Kopel. On Amazon, we read "Kopel concludes the best path to take may be to repeal the Sherman Act, the country's principal antitrust law."
Also at Amazon, we find Kopel is a senior fellow and director of the Center on the Digital Economy at The Heartland Institute, but that isn't his only job.
He also works for the Cato institute, which is funded by Microsoft, and for the Independent Institute, 'independently funded' by Microsoft. If you don't know the name of the Independent Institute, let me quote a bit from sourcewatch.

Literally taken from Sourcewatch.org; Independent Institute; material copyrighted under the GNU Free Doc License. Emphasizing by me:

"The New York Times had on September 18, 1999 an article by Joel Brinkley called "Unbiased Ads for Microsoft Came at a Price". The 'Ads' had the form of a letter signed by 240 academic "experts" and purported to be a scholarly, unbiased view of why the government had gone overboard in its case against the Microsoft. In reality, according to that article, Microsoft had not only paid for the ads, but was in fact the single largest donor to 'The Independent Institute'. David J. Theroux, the founder and president of this institute, confirmed in his reply that they received money from Microsoft. However, that was ± 8% of their total revenues and he stated that Microsoft was not their largest supporter. Despite Jacob Sullum's denial, it later turned out that Microsoft paid $203,217 to 'The Independent Institute' in 1999 which made Microsoft the largest supporter."

Last one, let's look at an article at Heartlands IT&T section, called "Georgia Not Waiting for Federal Reform".It is written by Barry M. Aarons, senior research fellow for the Institute for Policy Innovation. This institute (IPI) is by far the most interesting to research. This article by Mr. Aarons isn't related to Microsoft as far as I can see, but it leads to other interesting people, Mr. Abramoff being one of them. Tom Adelstein, former chief editor of LXer, has written some nice pieces about Abramoff and Microsoft.

IPI is another institute which is not revealing their sponsors. Instead of more independent, it just make them look suspicious. And that's when I found an old BusinessWeek article called "Op-Eds for sale". It mentions some Op-Eds who took money from Abramoff. One of them is Mr. Ferrara, who works for IPI. Mr. Ferrara admits he was paid by Abramoff to write Op-Ed pieces 'boosting Abramoffs clients" (a few years before he started working for IPI), and after admitting that, he says some very interesting things.

'Peter Ferrara, a senior policy adviser at the conservative Institute for Policy Innovation, says he, too, took money from Abramoff to write op-ed pieces boosting the lobbyist's clients. "I do that all the time," Ferrara says. "I've done that in the past, and I'll do it in the future."'.
...But he adds that at some point over the years, Abramoff stopped working with him: "Jack lost interest in me and felt he had other writers who were writing in more prominent publications," Ferrara says. So, this means Abramoff pays op-eds (opinion editors) to write articles in favour of Abramoffs clients, of which Microsoft was by far the largest between 1998 and 2004.

That's when the president of the IPI, Mr. Giovanetti comes in, writing the 'scandal' is about politics, and not about Ethics. The article tries to convince us there is no such thing as a scandal as a result of the op-eds, and defends Ferrara. He has some very interesting views, even I must admit.

(Quoted from "NationalReview.com")
"Just as we on the right have observed that the Left is funded by labor unions and by left-wing foundations like Ford, Rockefeller, and MacArthur, the Left understands that the Right gets funding from the business community.

So, it's left against right, it's the labor unions against the corporations? He forgets the different goals of corporations and labor unions: Corporations have the goal of making profit, while labor unions have the goal of protect the interest of their members. For example, Microsoft doesn't care that much about the interest of their clients, like most LXer readers know.

Finally, he shares with us his view of op-eds:

"Op-ed writers are taking positions, not reporting. They do not labor under the same obligations as reporters. Rather, it's obvious that the writer of an op-ed has a particular agenda and is trying to persuade. I'm convinced that most newspapers (and their readers) understood this all along and made their decisions based on the arguments being made, not on the details of the writer's compensation. There is nothing wrong with privately funded research, and privately funded policy advocacy."

If he says there's nothing wrong with "privately funded research, and privately funded policy advocacy" I wonder why IPI doesn't reveal their sources. Anyway, this might be the closest to the truth as we can come: As long as people understand op-eds have a particular agenda, there's no problem at all. But when, for example, politicians, naive readers, or European people like me who have no clue about how think tanks work - think this so called 'research' is objective and these op-eds are reporters, a lot of friction and misunderstanding will be the result.

Back to Steven Titch, the reason for this article. It's up to you how to look at the articles he writes. In a followup, Titch writes:

Parris gives no reason why Massachusetts taxpayers should feel good about the state's IT procurement policy.

Then, here's a question for Titch: Why should taxpayers feel good when buying products from Microsoft, and knowing a part of that money is going to think-tanks like Heartland which use that money to lobby against their interests by spreading disinformaiton, and telling how independent they are, while some of them don't reveal their funding?

Looking at the content of "The Dangers of Dictating Procurement", Don Parris refuted his unresearched rant point by point", to quote our member Inhibit from our forums. Hopefully, you are now more able to tell if Titch's writings are 'propaganda', like our honored member Dinotrac puts it in the same forum, or 'policy analysis', as the Reason Foundation puts it.