Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Over at MediaFreedom.org, a new site devoted to fighting the fanaticism of radical anti-media freedom groups like Free Press and other “media reformistas,” I’ve started rolling out a 5-part series of essays about “The Battle for Media Freedom.” In Part 1 of the series, I defined what real media freedom is all about, and in [...]
by Berin Szoka & Adam Thierer, Progress Snapshot 5.11 (PDF) Ten years ago, Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman lamented the “Business Community’s Suicidal Impulse:” the persistent propensity to persecute one’s competitors through regulation or the threat thereof. Friedman asked: “Is it really in the self-interest of Silicon Valley to set the government on Microsoft?” After [...]
FCC chair Julius Genachowski has certainly been busy. This week, of course, he’s been occupied with regulating the Internet. But last week, he was busy fending off charges on talk radio and elsewhere that the FCC has its very own “speech” or “diversity” czar. At issue was the appointment in August of ex-journalist and Center [...]
I cannot in strong enough terms recommend that everyone read Gordon Crovitz’s latest Wall Street Journal column, “Free Speech, Now that Speech is Free.” It perfectly encapsulates everything we stand for here and makes the case that I have made again and again: Speech regulation — of all flavors — makes less and less sense [...]
I wonder, now that the FCC has a blog, shouldn’t the Fairness Doctrine apply? I want my equal time on that soapbox! Every citizen should be given a chance to have their say. It’s only fair, right?
After cracking down on both international and domestic journalists, Iran is now looking to America for ways to squelch dissent. So, naturally, they’re copying America’s disastrous experience with censorship: the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” imposed by the FCC (despite the First Amendment’s plain language) in 1949 until its repeal in 1987: Iran’s State Inspectorate Organization, a [...]
When the history books are finally written documenting America’s failed experiment with broadcast industry content regulation, this past week may go down as a critical moment in the story. The obvious reason this week was so important was the Senate’s 87-11 vote on Thursday to prevent the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) from reinstating the Fairness [...]
I was over at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the other day chatting with someone about various regulatory issues and Rush Limbaugh’s WSJ editorial came up. The person I was speaking with made a comment about how conservatives have really been energized and unified in opposition to the re-imposition to the Doctrine. I reminded them, [...]
Here at TLF we often worry about government encroachment on the latest and greatest technologies. It seems that federal regulators want to control everything that has to do with our beloved and still largely free Internet—how data moves around, whether or not we can encrypt it, how long it is stored, who owns it, and [...]
Matt Lasar of Ars tells us not to worry about the Fairness Doctrine being revived, only to go on and cite several lawmakers who have said they’d like to revive it. Meanwhile, over at the American Spectator, somebody called “The Prowler” seems to have all sorts of unnamed sources on the Hill telling him the [...]
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.
