Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I absolutely loved this quote about the dangers of regulatory capture from Holman Jenkins in today’s Wall Street Journal in a story (“Let’s Restart the Green Revolution“) about how misguided agricultural / environmental policies are hurting consumers: When some hear the word “regulation,” they imagine government rushing to the defense of consumers. In the real [...]
Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles is certainly no fan of free markets, but his contribution to today’s paper offers us this humorous take on the dangers of regulatory capture, a subject we’ve spent much time documenting here on the TLF.
Well, there really isn’t anything left to be said about Net Neutrality regulation that hasn’t already been said a million times before. Yes, it is the most important technology policy battle of our time, but man, I am sick of it! Anyway, I’ve summarized the “The 5-Part Case against Net Neutrality Regulation” here before, so [...]
“Regulatory capture” occurs when special interests co-opt policymakers or political bodies — regulatory agencies, in particular — to further their own ends. Capture theory is closely related to the “rent-seeking” and “political failure” theories developed by the public choice school of economics. Another term for regulatory capture is “client politics,” which according to James Q. [...]
When it comes to technology policy, I’m usually a fairly optimistic guy. But when it comes to technology politics, well, I have my grumpier moments. I had at particularly grumpy moment earlier this summer when I was sitting at a hearing listening to a bunch of high-tech companies bash each other’s brains in and basically [...]
In the current issue of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, has one of the more sober arguments for government involvement in cybersecurity. Naturally, his focus is on military security and the Pentagon’s efforts to protect the .mil domain and military networks. He does, however, raise the question of whether and how [...]
An important anniversary just passed with little more notice than an email newsletter about the report that played a pivotal role in causing the courts to strike down the 1998 Child Online Protection Act (COPA) as an unconstitutional restriction on the speech of adults and website operators. (COPA required all commercial distributors of “material harmful [...]
I’ve been looking into the cybersecurity issue lately, and I finally took the time to do an in-depth read of the Securing Cyberspace for the 44th Presidency report, which is frequently cited as one of the soundest analyses of the issue. It was written by something of a self-appointed presidential transition commission called the “Commission [...]
If you want another prime example of how self-serving Washington interests often seek to wield the stick of Big Government to their advantage, look no further than the effort the FCC is currently undertaking to extend its “CableCARD” set-top box industrial policy. The regulatory shenanigans here got started 14 years ago with Section 629 of [...]
Earlier this month, a coalition of ad and marketing associations made public a new self-regulatory program for behavioral advertising (or as we like to refer to them, “interest-based ads”). Will it be enough to whet the appetite of members of Congress waiting to chomp on the privacy bit when they get back in November? Hopefully. [...]
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.
