Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin received a reprimand from the Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, John A. Boehner, based upon reports that Martin plans to side with the commission’s two Democrats on Friday to interfere with the network management decisions of broadband providers in the matter of Comcast delaying the uploading of P2P file [...]
I’m finally reading Cato’s 2006 Policy Analysis on spectrum property rights. It’s got a lot of good information, but this sentence made me do a double-take: In free space, radio waves steadily weaken in a very uniform, predictable way and at a rate that depends on frequency. In particular, the higher the frequency, the faster [...]
Om Malik has a hot-headed screed on his blog today about the supposed evils of capitalism, full of tales of corporate conspiracies and the such. But I love the way most of his reader have taken him to task for calling on FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to become a true “21st century Robin Hood who [...]
My last post sparked some interesting discussion about the economics of the Internet. With all due respect to my co-blogger Hance, though, this is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about: [Tim's post] unfortunately overlooks the essence of what NN regulation is really about as far as commercial entities are concerned, i.e., profitable [...]
The Journal has an editorial today on Kevin Martin’s crusade against Comcast that generally reaches the right conclusions—network neutrality regulations aren’t necessary, and even if they were the FCC doesn’t have the authority to impose them unilaterally. But in the process, they repeat a line that is repeated fairly often by free-marketeers, but is nevertheless [...]
When I was growing up in Illinois and Indiana, my friends and family used to make fun of me for always having my nose in a book. Everywhere I went I carried a book–first comics then novels–and was constantly reading while I walked about the neighborhood. [I still do so today, except it's more like [...]
I’ve got a new piece up at Ars Technica that explores the concept of customer-owned fiber. It was inspired by a post by Google’s Derek Slater, who is working with Tim Wu on a paper making the case for customer-owned fiber in more detail. The structure of today’s telecom market is roughly analogous to a [...]
Over at Techdirt I respectfully disagree with Adam’s broadside against Tim Wu’s “absurd” piece on the broadband cartel. Tim Wu’s an ideologically savvy guy, and he’s a master at deploying libertarian rhetoric in defense of not-very-libertarian proposals. I get that, and I’m perfectly willing to call him out when he does so. But in other [...]
In today’s New York Times, Tim Wu writes in favor new regulation of the Internet and uses a number of bad analogies to do so. Let us count the ways. My colleague Adam Thierer has already noted that OPEC is a group of mostly government-run oil companies whereas U.S. broadband service providers are private companies [...]
Last month I posted a tongue-and-cheek piece thanking policymakers for taking steps to save us from loud TV ads and product placements. The whole thing just strikes me as the height of absurdity; it’s a stupid way for regulators to spend their time and it’s a complete waste of taxpayer dollars. Backers of such regulations [...]
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.
