Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
President-elect Barack Obama will soon be naming Cass Sunstein, an old friend of his from their University of Chicago Law School days together, the new head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA oversees regulation throughout the U.S. government. Basically, Sunstein’s position is the equivalent of the federal regulatory czar. Sunstein [...]
Regarding Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig’s proposal to abolish the Federal Communications Commission: Adam covered the main points here and I’d like to add a couple minor points. The idea of abolishing the FCC used to be a right-wing fantasy. But now Silicon Valley-booster Lessig is on board. With so much in its reach, the [...]
I’m re-reading Tim Lee’s excellent and very long paper on network neutrality, “The Durable Internet.” It’s excellent partly because it’s such a long read—it’s exhaustive in addressing all the issues surrounding the neutrality debate. With all the great writing—like Tim’s paper—available on the topic, I can’t understand why so many people who write about technology [...]
Naturally, now that government plans to intervene in the economy with a massive stimulus package, everyone wants their “fair” share. Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, is arguing for digitized health records, a smart power grid and faster broadband connections: While creating jobs by upgrading the nation’s physical infrastructure may help [...]
Continuing the “Cutting the (Video) Cord” series started by my PFF colleague Adam Thierer: The WSJ had two great pieces yesterday about the increasing competitive relevance of television distributed by Internet—a trend that was at the heart of an amicus brief PFF recently filed in support of C omcast’s challenge of the FCC’s 30% cap on cable [...]
Microsoft’s share of the browser market across all versions of Internet Explorer has dropped, by one estimate, dropped from 78.58% in December 2007 to 68.15% in December 2008 (or by just under 8% in another estimate). [IE's] share dropped from 69.77% in November to 68.15% in December. [During the same period,] Firefox gained more than half a point and [...]
The FCC’s much-maligned proposal to create a free, filtered wireless broadband network seemed all but dead earlier this week after FCC Chairman Kevin Martin stated in an interview with Broadcast & Cable that the proposal’s chances of surviving a full FCC vote were “dim.” Now, Ars reports that Kevin Martin has changed his mind about [...]
I’m in the mood for making bold predictions, so I predict (with fingers crossed) that we won’t see neutrality regulation passed in 2009. I want to say right away that this is more of a hope than a assessment of the regulation’s political chances, but it’s a hope worth sharing. Over at OpenMarket.org, the blog [...]
January 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
