Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Everybody seems to be freaking out about Warner Music chief Edgar Bronfman saying earlier this week that he would like to see variable pricing on iTunes. Rather than a flat 99-cent rate for all songs, Bronfman would like to charge more for popular songs and less for songs that are older or not in demand. [...]
On October 25 the DOJ and FTC are jointly holding a workshop on competition policy and the real estate industry. A topic that the workshop will consider is one that I have written about a few times in the past: state laws that restrict competition among buyers’ and sellers’ brokers. Licensing laws that aim to [...]
In case you missed it, The Economist ran an excellent editorial and survey article last week on the ongoing Internet revolution in the phone business. The title on the cover, “How the Internet Killed the Phone Business” is a bit misleading–as the article points out, telephony will likely expand massively as Internet technologies take hold. [...]
The Wall Street Journal reported today that, in an effort to combat rampant movie and music piracy overseas (especially in China), some media companies are radically cutting prices on their DVDs and CDs to undercut the pirates. Warner Brothers, for example, plans to drop DVD prices to roughly $2 to $4 in China and NBC [...]
As noted in the post below, the telecommunications reform plan floated recently by the staff of the House Energy and Commerce committee includes some 80 regulations, mandates or restrictions. To be more precise, there are, by my count, 82–more than one per page. Of course, some might quibble over this number– the difference between a [...]
After excellent posts on the subject by Adam and Braden, it may seem like piling on, but here’s my own take on the telecom reform draft bill. Bottom line: the rewrite needs a rewrite. House Telecom Rewrite Needs a Rewrite September 23, 2005 WebMemo #860 What happened to telecom deregulation? That was the question last [...]
I’m certainly not going to claim that Google is going to win in court, since fair use determinations are notoriously hard to predict. But I think that on the merits, their case is a lot stronger than Jerry gives them credit for. It’s not clear to me why Jerry doesn’t consider a parody a derivative [...]
I think Tim is right that courts are beginning to realize that “new technological realities” make the kind of copying that search engines and other net applications engage in different from “the copying prohibited by traditional copyright law.” But they are really going to have to get it if Google Print Library is to succeed [...]
The September 15 discussion draft from the House Energy & Commerce Committee is aimed at reforming the nation’s telecom and cable laws. While it does change and “update” the law, is also succeeds at creating no less than 30 new mandatory and discretionary FCC powers! It creates new complicated, technology-based rules to replace old ones [...]
Solveig Singleton and I recently released a short analysis of the ongoing ICANN dispute over the proposed “.xxx” top-level domain (TLD). In our PFF Progress Snapshot, we point out that important issues are raised by the recent effort of the United States to intervene at the last moment and interfere with the creation of this [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
