Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
By Ryan Radia and Wayne Crews Today, the European Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Google to probe allegations that the firm rigged its search engine to discriminate against rivals. This intervention in the online search market, however, will distort the market’s evolution, discourage competitors from innovating, and ultimately hurt consumers. Google isn’t a [...]
Earlier today I spoke at the Brookings Institution event “The Future of E-rulemaking: Promoting Public Participation and Efficiency,” which was co-sponsored with the Administrative Conference of the United States. I made two points: we have not yet achieved regulatory transparency, and wiki-government does not overcome Hayek’s knowledge problem. What follows are my remarks. When we [...]
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, early investor in Facebook, and president of Clarium Capital, discusses the stagnation of technological innovation. Thiel gives reasons why innovation has slowed recently — offering examples of stalled sectors such as space exploration, transportation, energy, and biotechnology — while pointing out that growth in internet-based technologies is a notable exception. He aslo comments on political undercurrents of Silicon Valley, government regulation, privacy and Facebook, and his new fellowship program that will pay potential entrepreneurs to “stop out” of school for two years.
Former TLF blogger Tim Lee returns with this guest post. Find him most of the time at the Bottom-Up blog. Thanks to Jim Harper for inviting me to return to TLF to offer some thoughts on the recent Adam Thierer-Tim Wu smackdown. I’ve recently finished finished reading The Master Switch, and I didn’t have have [...]
I was quoted this morning in Sara Jerome’s story for The Hill on the weekend seizures of domain names the government believes are selling black market, counterfeit, or copyright infringing goods. The seizures take place in the context of an on-going investigation where prosecutors make purchases from the sites and then determine that the goods [...]
Milton Mueller, a professor at Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, is a familiar figure to anyone who follows Internet governance issues. He has established himself as a leading Net governance guru thanks to his extensive academic record in this field with books like Ruling the Root: Internet Governance and the Taming of Cyberspace (2002) [...]
Proponents of Net neutrality regulation continue their full-court press to get the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and its chairman, Julius Genachowski, to unilaterally push through a new industrial policy regime for the Internet. The latest word, according to Politico, is that the agency is pushing back its scheduled December open meeting from Dec. 15 to [...]
After freak-outs and backpedaling, Microsoft has revised its stance on the so-called “hacks” of the Kinect. Wired’s Tim Carmody reported on Monday that Microsoft seems to have indicated that it won’t be taking legal action against anyone who has found new and “unsupported” uses for the Kinect. Shannon Loftis and Alex Kipman—two Microsofties involved in [...]
What does the Netflix decision mean for consumers—two words: More choice! This is what functional markets deliver.
Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, general director of the Mercatus Center, and founder of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution, answers questions from Surprisingly Free listeners and Marginal Revolution readers. Cowen discusses why people will be appalled that we ever questioned intrusive searches by TSA, what should have been done to minimize unemployment and other harm from the financial crisis, how the “famous American formula” for good government is broken, what might force us to sit around opening cans of dog food with our teeth, and which global sites should be connected by Stargate portals to create the most value. He also asks, “Why read books?”, speculates about the value of his blog, addresses price discrimination of chicken McNuggets, talks about a modern day Athens in Asia with good food, suggests that internet comments are a relatively harmless form of stupidity, and opines about the best thing that government does.
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.
