Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Susan Crawford asks a good question: How does one reconcile being both “for” network neutrality regulation and rules against media concentration? To be “for” network neutrality, it seems natural to have the view that the internet is displacing many prior forms of communications modalities–the press is in a free fall, people are watching much less [...]
Over at Ars, Jon Stokes has a story on the debate over allowing more high-skilled immigrants into the country: In an op-ed in yesterday’s Washington Post, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates argues yet again in favor of raising the cap on H1-B foreign worker visas from its present number of 65,000. Gates’ basic argument boils down [...]
SAN JOSE, February 26, 2007–AT&T Senior Vice President Jim Ciconni said Tuesday that the telecommunications world is fundamentally different from 1968, when the FCC required AT&T to allow competing telephones onto its network.
SAN JOSE, February 26, 2007–Legislation to overhaul aspects of the patent system could take shape in as few as two or three weeks, said Rep. Howard Berman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Intellectual Property and the Internet.
Communications Daily reports today that public TV stations are thinking about taking a direct role in distributing DTV converter boxes for their viewers–either by negotiating alliances with retailers, or distributing the devices themselves–perhaps as gifts during pledge drives. Nothing wrong with that–in fact its refreshing to see anyone doing something on the DTV transition without [...]
Unpopular on MySpace? Buy a few friends: Enter FakeYourSpace.com, a business founded by Brant Walker, which offered users of MySpace.com and similar sites a way to enhance their page with photographs and comments from hired “friends”–mainly attractive models–for 99 cents a month each. … MobileAlibi.com and PopularityDialer.com offer similar services, using fake cellphone calls scheduled [...]
As everyone knows by now, whether the proposed Sirius-XM satellite radio merger goes through has turns, in large part, on the definition of the market in which the companies compete. And it’s no secret that many tech analysts, being (often) forward-looking, recognize that satellite radio’s weakness is due to the competition it faces from other [...]
My former PFF colleague Randy May, now president of the Maryland-based Free State Foundation, had an editorial in The Washington Times over the weekend about the ominous new trend of state governments pushing Net Neutrality mandates. He notes that Maryland has just introduced such a measure, joining California, Maine and Michigan as states who have [...]
Cnet News reports that BitTorrent (the company) is launching an online movie rental store today. As with Zudeo, a similar service from the creators of the Azureus bittorrent (the protocol) client, the movie files will reach viewers via tit-for-tat peer-to-peer networking. The question is whether consumers will bite at the chance to lend BitTorrent their [...]
Frank Ahrens, the Washington Post’s outstanding media affairs reporter, has posted a short review of a new book I’ve been meaning to review myself by Eric Klinenberg called “Fighting for the Air: The Battle for America’s Media.” Klinenberg’s book is another “sky-is-falling” anti-media consolidation screed that serves as a call-to-arms for media activists to “take [...]
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.
