Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
As we’ve noted here before, state and local politicians just love wireless taxes. They are going up, up, up. Dan Rothschild outlined this disturbing trend in his recent Mercatus Center paper making “The Case Against Taxing Cell Phone Subscribers,” and I discussed it in my recent Forbes essay lambasting the “Talking Tax.” Another new study [...]
PFF today released the fifth installment in our ongoing series on “The Wrong Way to Reinvent Media.” This series of papers explores various tax and regulatory proposals that would have government play an expanded role in supporting the press, journalism, or other media content. In the latest essay, Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I discuss [...]
As I’ve mentioned here previously, PFF has been rolling out a new series of essays examining proposals that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. We’re releasing these as we get ready to submit a big filing in the FCC’s “Future [...]
By Adam Thierer & Berin Szoka In a series of upcoming essays, we will be examining proposals being put forward today that would have the government play a greater role in sustaining struggling media enterprises, “saving journalism,” or promoting more “public interest” content. The reason we’re working up this multi-part series is because, with many [...]
I testified this morning in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet at a hearing titled, “An Examination of the Proposed Combination of Comcast and NBC Universal.” Among those testifying were Comcast Chairman and CEO Brian L. Roberts, and NBC Universal President and CEO Jeff Zucker. Down below I [...]
There was a hearing today in the House Energy and Commerce Committee on “Reauthorization of the Satellite Home Viewer Extension and Reauthorization Act,” which got into the sticky of issue of whether must carry mandates should be applied to satellite television (DBS) operators. My boss, Ken Ferree, president of the Progress & Freedom Foundation, testified [...]
The WSJ reports on the intensifying economic pressure on local TV stations: declining viewership, ad revenue and the threat that national networks might go straight to cable. Many stations are looking to the Internet for salvation: Stations are scrambling to find new revenue streams. Some are testing out technology that will send their signals [...]
Over on the Poynter Online blog, Amy Gahran has a very smart piece on some of the confusion surrounding debates about “media localism.” In her essay asking “How Important is Local, Really?”, she challenges some of the assumptions underlying the Knight Foundation’s new Commission on the Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy. I particularly [...]
As we’ve discussed here before, newspapers are struggling. We all know that. The question is what, if anything, will save them? Most pundits tend to point to a two-fold solution: (1) get serious about leveraging the natural local advantages newspapers hold; (2) and find away to do so online as quickly as possible before they [...]
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.
