Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Tim Lee and I are narrowing in on our core disagreement (or, at any rate, one of them) with respect to cable broadband regulation. I argued that certain unpopular price discrimination techniques, such as broadband caps, have efficiency rationales. After some apparent talking past each other, Tim has clarified that he agrees with my argument [...]
Lafayette, La., like a number of U.S. municipalities, is facing a recession-driven budget crunch, largely due to health care and retirement costs. Unlike most municipalities, however, Lafayette faces a $140-million reckoning in the form a municipal fiber to the home system. After an auditor’s report raised some flags about the extent city’s been dipping into [...]
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 [...]
The folks at the Concurring Opinions blog were kind enough to invite me to participate in a 2-day symposium they are holding about Brett Frischmann’s new book, Infrastructure: The Social Value of Shared Resources. In my review, I noted that it’s an important book that offers a comprehensive and highly accessible survey of the key [...]
There is a Senate Commerce Committee hearing today on online video, and our friends at Free Press, Consumers Union, Public Knowledge, and New America Foundation argue that it should be used to investigate ISP-imposed data caps. If data caps had a legitimate economic justification, they might be just a necessary annoyance. But they do not [...]
On Fierce Mobile IT, I’ve posted a detailed analysis of the NTIA’s recent report on government spectrum holdings in the 1755-1850 MHz. range and the possibility of freeing up some or all of it for mobile broadband users. The report follows from a 2010 White House directive issued shortly after the FCC’s National Broadband Plan [...]
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 [...]
Unshackling a market from obsolete, protectionist regulations can be a very challenging undertaking, especially when the lifeblood of a regulated industry is at stake. The latest push for regulatory reform to encounter the murky waters of modernization is the “Next Generation Television Marketplace Act.” The ambitious and comprehensive bill, introduced by Rep. Steve Scalise and [...]
Imagine the following scenario. The government passes a law that includes regulations governing “transactional consent” for retail commerce. These regulations stipulate how buyers and sellers of various goods shall do business. Some of the rules give the sellers special rights to demand that the stores carry some of their goods as well as rules stipulating [...]
May 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.
