Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
There’s been a lot written in recent months about the “death of old media” in general and the demise of newspapers in particular. Regardless of where you get your news, the headlines all scream that the days of old media are numbered. Here’s a small sample of some of my recent favorites: “The Collapse of [...]
In its biggest decision since new chairman Kevin Martin took over, the FCC voted last week to impose federal regulation on Internet telephone service. Specifically, the Commission required VoIP providers to provide 911 connections as a standard feature of their service within 120 days. The decision was not surprising, and is something consumers were demanding [...]
The FCC recently voted to require VoIP providers to offer full 911 support. Obviously, my initial libertarian reaction is that the government should butt out and let consumers choose the phone service they like. If 911 service is important to them, they can choose a provider that offers it. If none do, they can stick [...]
Tonight I’ll be moderating an America’s Future Foundation roundtable discussion on broadcast indecency and you’re all invited. Speakers will include Drew Clark of the National Journal, former former radio news anchor and reporter Ken Wolfe, and Marvin Johnson of the ACLU. The event will take place at the Fund for American Studies (1706 New Hampshire [...]
How quickly we all forget the collective hand-wringing and mass hysteria that was generated by the announcement just five years ago that AOL and Time Warner would be merging. As journalist Matt Welch has noted, when the deal was announced, the Chicken Little crowd came out in full force with claims that the AOL-Time Warner [...]
FCC Commissioner Michael Copps never ceases to amaze me. Like a fire-and-brimstone preacher prophesizing the impending apocalypse, his speeches sometimes border on the neurotic rantings of madman. In late 2003, for example, he delivered an entertaining sermon at the New America Foundation entitled: “The Beginning of the End of the Internet? Discrimination, Closed Networks, and [...]
The dog-bites-man story of the past week was no doubt a petition filed at the FCC by the Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union and US PIRG urging rejection of Verizon’s acquisition of MCI. The petition (virtually a carbon-copy of a filing by the same groups on the SBC-AT&T deal) was rather breathless in tone–warning [...]
The Wall Street Journal today reports on France’s efforts to create a competitor to Google. As described in an earlier post, France’s ever-vigilent culture wardens see Google as a threat. Specifically they find galling (pun intended) Google’s initiative to scan millions of books from US and UK libraries into its database. This, says French President [...]
There’s an important piece on B1 of today’s Wall Street Journal about the growing market for mobile media content. In particular, the article focuses on the potential for sexually oriented content to be a major driver in this market over the next few years. Already, several cell phone carriers or content providers are developing such [...]
“Orphan works” are artistic works still under copyright but whose owner cannot be identified. Because the owner can’t be found, these copyrighted works are not able to be used and society loses out on their creative utilization. The Copyright Office has a proceeding underway on how to solve the orphan works problem. In comments I [...]
May 16, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
