Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell penned an outstanding piece in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription) on the commission’s vote tomorrow on neutrality regulation. The final paragraph is worth a Pulitzer: On this winter solstice, we will witness jaw-dropping interventionist chutzpah as the FCC bypasses branches of our government in the dogged pursuit of needless and harmful regulation. The [...]
Americans are increasingly cutting the cord on their phones. By the most recent estimates, 40 percent Americans rely primarily on their wireless phone for voice calls, and most of those don’t have a wireline phone at all. But don’t count me in that number. Its not that I wouldn’t like to cut the cord. It’s [...]
As Steve Titch discusses below, Google and Verizon, two of the leading antagonists in the long-running drama over FCC net neutrality regulation, may be about to call a truce. According to numerous media reports, the two firms have or soon will agree to a compromise framework for regulation, which would provide for a limited degree [...]
Could net neutrality rules be unconstitutional? Maybe so, says Daniel Lyons of Boston College Law School. In a piece released last week by the Free State Foundation (based on a more extensive research paper for Boston College last March) he argues that rules of the sort being considered by the FCC may constitute a taking of property under the [...]
“When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less,” Humpty-Dumpty said. The famous egg could have worked for the Federal Communications Commission, which today took the first step toward re-defining broadband service as telecommunications. The decision comes only two months after a federal court — [...]
No one disputes that a key goal of the FCC is to help foster diversity in, and minority access to, channels of communication. In practice, this all too often has been interpreted to mean ownership limits, set-asides, preferences and other mandates imposed by the Commission. Usually lost in the heated debates is the fact that [...]
A funny thing happened to the FCC Friday on its way to regulating the Internet: a federal appeals court panel questioned the agency’s authority to regulate the web. There’s no final decision yet, but an adverse ruling could stop the agency’s Internet regulation plans in their tracks. And for good reason. In proposing new neutrality [...]
With the advent of new technology, newspapers are being threatened. Many are expected to go out of business, and the rest will have to change substantially. Many observers fear that journalism will become too driven by speed, and that judgment and deliberation will be lost. Others said that news reporting would be devalued and only [...]
Bidding has begun on Comcast’s acquisition of a majority stake in NBC Universal. No, not the bidding between GE and Comcast over the terms of the sale. That was the comparatively easy part. The real bidding is over at the FCC, as various interests work to get concessions and pledges from Comcast as a condition of FCC approval [...]
November was certainly a bad month, public relations-wise, for the Administration’s stimulus program, what with claims that the program had created huge new numbers of jobs debunked. (Who would have guessed that numbers given for Arizona’s 15th congressional district or Minnesota’s 57th district were wrong?) But, as pointed out last week by my collegue Meinan Goto, [...]
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.
