Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
[I’ve been working on an outline for a book I hope to write surveying technological skepticism throughout history. I first started thinking about this topic two years when I noticed that a great number of recent books about Internet policy could generally be grouped into one of two camps: Internet optimists vs. Internet pessimists. I [...]
For those of you inclined to read protracted legalese filings, NBC Universal, Comcast and GE submitted their Public Interest Statement to the FCC this week. You can read the filing here. Many conspiracies have been touted, claiming that public control of communication mediums will be wrested away from the public because of this venture and [...]
While the FCC considers whether to impose nondiscrimination and transparency regulation to all forms of broadband Internet access, Public Knowledge is proposing to subject broadband services to the same pervasive, overlapping, heavy-handed regulatory framework as century-old telephone service (see this and this) — a framework which a former FCC chairman during the Clinton Administration described [...]
Spike TV’s John Papola and GMU economics professor Russell Roberts teamed up to create an exceptional and entertaining “rap video” pitting John Maynard Keynes against F. A. Hayek. If you ever wondered what would happen if the two famous economists went out drinking together, here’s one answer. Now this is a great use of social [...]
At today FTC’s “Exploring Privacy” roundtable event at Berkeley Law School, were heard a lunchtime address from Daniel J. Weitzner, Associate Administrator for Policy, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) at the Department of Commerce. Down below is a brief summary of his remarks. (Berin Szoka and have been live-tweeting the event at @AdamThierer and [...]
Catching up on some magazines while waiting for my car to pass its annual emissions test the other day, I came across an article on cable TV bundling. Not too long ago, the issue of cable TV multichannel packaging–and whether cable companies should be required to offer channels “a la carte,” allowing customers to pick [...]
I’m attending the FTC’s 2nd “Exploring Privacy” roundtable event, which is taking place at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law. Here’s the agenda. (I’ll be live Tweeting @AdamThierer). FTC Commissioner Pamela Jones Harbour & FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director David Vladeck kicked things off. Here’s a quick summary of their remarks: Data collection [...]
The State of the Union Speech, and the opposition party’s resposne, would be more productive if the audience held their applause until the end.
As I’ve detailed in a WashingtonWatch.com blog post, the president called for earmark transparency in his state-of-the-union speech tonight. A fact sheet put out by the White House goes beyond the president’s words to call for “a comprehensive, bipartisan, state-of-the-art disclosure database that allows Americans to examine the details of every proposed earmark before a [...]
The Ticketmaster-Live Nation antitrust saga has come to a bittersweet end. Earlier this week the Justice Department finally approved the merger between the two firms, just shy of one year after it was announced. While a number antitrust experts had speculated that the Justice Department might seek an injunction to block the deal outright, the [...]
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.
