Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
So, the GAO recently released a report on the wireless industry and found that: The biggest changes in the wireless industry since 2000 have been consolidation among wireless carriers and increased use of wireless services by consumers. Industry consolidation has made it more difficult for small and regional carriers to be competitive. Difficulties for these [...]
[I’m always amazed by the misuse of language in debates over media and communications policy. Some regulatory advocates, like Free Press and Public Knowledge, seem to contort the meaning of everyday words in such a grotesque way that they are barely recognizable. Luckily, via Wikileaks, Mike Wendy and I stumbled upon a secret copy of [...]
I sometimes enjoy picking nits with or lampooning our friend Scott Cleland, but today write to point out what an excellent job he did of advocating against net neutrality regulation last week on the NewsHour. The set-up piece is interesting because of its government-centric take. Net neutrality, it says, is “a set of principles adopted [...]
John Schwartz of The New York Times called me two weeks ago and asked for comment about a potential controversy involving mobile phone provider Sprint and the charitable organization Catholic Relief Services (CRS). The facts were pretty sketchy at the time, but Schwartz told me that CRS was accusing Sprint of blocking Mobile Commons, the [...]
I debated PK’s Art Brodsky last week about net neutrality on the international news channel, RussiaToday. Here are a few of my key points of disagreement with Art: The glittering generality of “Neutrality,” once enshrined in law for one layer of the Internet will be extended, sooner or later, to other layers. As Adam and I [...]
The Cato Unbound online debate about the 10th anniversary of Lawrence Lessig’s Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace continues today with my response to Declan McCullagh’s opening essay, “What Larry Didn’t Get,” as well as Jonathan Zittrain’s follow-up. In my response, “Code, Pessimism, and the Illusion of ‘Perfect Control,’” I begin by arguing that: The [...]
Tim Lee has been taking some heat here from Richard Bennett and Steve Schultze about various aspects of his new Net neutrality paper. I haven’t had much time this week to jump into these debates, but I did want to mention one important portion of Tim’s paper that is being overlooked. Specifically, I like the [...]
Jesse Walker has a terrific feature story looking “Beyond the Fairness Doctrine” in this month’s issue of Reason magazine. I highly recommend it. It’s an in-depth exploration of what an Obama Administration means for the future of tech and media policy. Walker rightly opens the piece by noting that “The fairness doctrine is still dead, [...]
Our conference, “Broadband Census for America,” is fast approaching…. The event is tomorrow. If you want to attend, follow the instructions in the press release below: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE WASHINGTON, September 25, 2008 – California Public Utilities Commissioner Rachelle Chong, a member of the Federal Communications Commission from 1994 to 1997, will kick off the [...]
Channeling Jonathan Zittrain, Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge continues his incessant ranting against Apple and the iPhone for supposedly not being open enough and, therefore, somehow harming consumers and 3rd party developers. In his essay today about the supposed evils of the iPhone App Store, he accuses Apple of an “1984 kind of total control.” [...]
February 14, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
