Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
More this week on the efforts of Reed Hastings of Netflix to reignite the perennial debate over network access regulation, courtesy of the New York Times. Hastings is seeking a free ride on Comcast’s multi-billion-dollar investment in broadband Internet access. Times columnist Eduardo Porter apparently believes that he has seen the future and thinks it works: [...]
The airline would not let coach passenger Susan Crawford stow her viola in first class on a crowded flight from DC to Boston, she writes at Wired (Be Very Afraid: The Cable-ization of Online Life Is Upon Us). Just imagine trying to run a business that is utterly dependent on a single delivery network — a gatekeeper [...]
Cecilia Kang of the Washington Post reports that the telecom industry is forcing policymakers to re-examine what has long been a basic guarantee of government – that every American home should have access to a phone, along with other utilities such as water or electricity. Industry executives and state lawmakers who support this effort want to expand [...]
When the federal government torpedoed the AT&T/T-Mobile USA merger in December pursuant to the current administration’s commitment to “reinvigorate antitrust enforcement,” it created a new client in search of official protection and favors. It was clear there is no way T-Mobile – which lost 802,000 contract customers in the fourth quarter – is capable of [...]
Congress freed up much-needed electromagnetic spectrum for mobile communications services Friday (H.R. 3630), but it set the stage for years of wasteful lobbying and litigating over whether regulators should be allowed to pick winners and losers among mobile service providers. The wireless industry has thrived in the near absence of any regulation since 1993. But [...]
AT&T and T-Mobile withdrew their merger application from the Federal Communications Commission Nov. 29 after it became clear that rigid ideologues at the FCC with no idea how to promote economic growth were determined to create as much trouble as possible. The companies will continue to battle the U.S. Department of Justice on behalf of [...]
Futurists have been predicting for years that there will be diminished privacy in the future, and we will just have to adapt. In 1999, for example, Sun Mcrosystems CEO Scott McNealy posited that we have “zero privacy.” Now, Wall Street Journal columnist Gordon Crovitz is suggesting that technology has the “power to rewrite constitutional protections.” [...]
Is it “insane” for free market oriented thinkers to support the AT&T/T-Mobile merger? Although AT&T says there are five choices of wireless providers to choose from in 18 of 20 major markets, Milton Mueller argues that 93 percent of wireless subscribers prefer a seamless, nationwide provider. If the merger is approved, there would only be [...]
Julius Genachowski is in a hurry. He is arguing that the commission must act quickly to “restore the longstanding deregulatory—as opposed to ‘no-regulatory’ or ‘over-regulatory’—compact” that governed broadband Internet access services prior to a recent court decision. Such an approach is urgently needed to “restore the status quo,” he claims. If the Federal Communications Commission [...]
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 [...]
May 22, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
