Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
On Monday it was my great pleasure to participate in a Cato Institute briefing on Capitol Hill about “Internet Taxation: Should States Be Allowed to Tax outside Their Borders?” Also speaking was my old friend Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow with Cato. From the event description: “State officials have spent the last 15 years attempting [...]
Reps. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) and Steve Womack (R-Ark.) have introduced “The Marketplace Equity Act,” which would open the floodgates to anything-goes State-based taxation of the Internet and interstate commerce. The bill essentially sacrifices constitutional fairness at the alter of “tax fairness.” Building on concerns raised by state and local officials as well as “bricks-and-mortar” retailers, [...]
The debate over the imposition of sales tax collection obligations on interstate vendors is heating up again at the federal level with the introduction of S. 1452, “The Main Street Fairness Act.” [pdf] The measure would give congressional blessing to a multistate compact that would let states impose sales taxes on interstate commerce, something usually [...]
There’s a movement afoot in Congress to advance legislation that would eviscerate the Commerce Clause of the Constitution, empower a state-based tax cartel, and potentially decimate the Internet economy in the process. Business Week has the details: In the next week, legislators are expected to introduce bills in the House and Senate promising to do [...]
A new report from TeleGeography finds that bandwidth prices for backbone transit continue to decline rapidly across the globe. In San Francisco, for instance, the price per mbps of Gigabit Ethernet transit has dropped 38 % in the past 12 months. Developing countries are also enjoying substantial price cuts in 15 to 20% range. But [...]
So, if Tim Wu’s thesis is correct that the broadband marketplace is “a cartel,” should we be reading headlines in today’s Wall Street Journal and CNET News.com like this: “Price War Erupts For High-Speed Internet Service” and “Broadband Price War Brews“? From the WSJ story: The battle between cable and phone companies to sign up [...]
Tim Wu has an absurd piece in today’s New York Times comparing America’s broadband marketplace to OPEC. This really is quite outrageous, beginning with the fact that OPEC is a GOVERNMENT-RUN cartel. Wu also had a comment in the Washington Post today saying that he didn’t think broadband metering was an outrage. Well, that’s nice. [...]
May 28, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
