In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, general director of the Mercatus Center, and author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. We discusses how the internet influences and changes practically everything. The conversation broadly centers on how the web allows us to find, distill, and sort information as never before, which has profoundly affected people’s consumption of culture and creation of their own economies. During the podcast Cowen touches on Lost and Battlestar Gallactica, the iPad, books, the future of the publishing industry, old and new media, Facebook, Twitter, ChatRoulette, and his favorite things on the internet.
The Supreme Court recently announcedthat it will review a California law regulating the sale of violently-themed video games to minors. The case under review is Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association. In it, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a California law which prohibited the sale or rental of “violent video games” to minors. I’m inclined to agree with Julie Hilden when she notes that “it seems very unlikely that the Supreme Court took this case in order to proclaim, as the Ninth Circuit panel did, that minors do indeed have First Amendment rights — rights that extend far enough to reach ‘violent’ video games.” I hope that we’re both wrong and that the Court took the case to instead affirm the free speech rights of game creators and users (and yes, even minors), but the justices could have just left the Ninth Circuit ruling be and that would have been settled.
Anyway, let’s think this through here. What if the Supremes took the Schwarzenegger case to overturn the Ninth Circuit and to uphold the right of state governments to regulate the sale of “violent” video game content, however that’s defined. Let’s consider such a potential holding in light of two other free speech cases handed down over the past few years.
Over the weekend, I published an op-ed in The Des Moines Register encouraging the FCC to heed the lessons of the first national broadband plan, the one Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin sent to Congress in 1808.
Gallatin was a remarkable figure in the early history of the federal government, and his accomplishments include being the longest-serving Treasury secretary (1801-1812) to date. His report on the Subject of Public Roads and Canals, completed at the request of Congress, remains one of the seminal documents in the history of American infrastructure. It is a masterpiece of dispassionate policy-making and clear-headed writing.
Alas, the document is available nowhere online, and the only in-print copy I can find is published by the aptly-named Dodo Press. This is indeed unfortunate given the renewed interest in network infrastructure as a form of national technology. The NBP published in March by the FCC, despite its nearly 400 pages and thousands of footnotes, makes no reference to Gallatin or his plan. Continue reading →
PFF hosted an event last Friday asking “What Should the Next Communications Act Look Like?” and the folks at NextGenWeb were kind enough to make a video of the event and post it online along with a writeup. The event featured (in order of appearance) Link Hoewing of Verizon, Walter McCormick of US Telecom, Peter Pitsch of Intel, Barbara Esbin of PFF, Ray Gifford of Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer, and Michael Calabrese of the New America Foundation. It was a terrific discussion and it couldn’t have been more timely in light of recent regulatory developments at the FCC. Here’s the 90-min event video if you are interested:
I’m keeping tabs on who filed “major” comments (more than a 10-15 pages) in the Federal Communications Commission’s “Future of Media” proceeding (GN Docket No. 10-25). As I noted last week, The Progress & Freedom Foundation submitted almost 80 pages of comments (single-spaced!) in the matter, so it’s something I care deeply about and will be tracking closely going forward.
Incidentally, the general consensus of those who filed (especially if you count “minor” comments) is fairly overwhelming: Bring on Big Government! Seriously, I only found a handful of comments that object strenuously to government meddling in media markets or that raised concerns about the potential for the State’s increasing involvement in the journalism profession. Even many of the affected industries appear to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome here. Most of them just play up the good things they are doing but barely utter a peep about the dangers of federal encroachment into the affairs of the Press.
Anyway, for those of you who care to track the gradual federalization of media and journalism, I think what you see below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the major filings submitted thus far in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding. I’ll try to add more as I find them. You might also want to track what was filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshops on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age.” Finally, if you care to learn more of this issue, I’m hosting an event on the morning of May 20th to discuss these issues in more detail.
I have an op-ed on the FCC’s broadband re-classification plan on AOL today, paired with a counterpoint commentary from Megan Tady of Free Press. My piece focuses on how the plan will lead to FCC intrusiveness in almost every area of broadband. But “third way” labels notwithstanding, it is sheer folly to try to wrap a monopoly era regime around competitive broadband services. The FCC is about to embark on a lengthy legal battle that will cost tons of political capital while offering it very little chance of winning.
Bottom line: No matter what the information, the faster it is allowed to move and the easier it is for people, businesses and government agencies to link it together to produce value, the better it is for everyone. Until this week, even the FCC expressly understood and endorsed this approach.
Telephone service is about one-to-one connection. Broadband is about many-to-many interconnections. That’s why the FCC separated the two to begin with. Constraining broadband with rules that applied to another service in another era can’t help but end up as a policy disaster.
The Smoking Gun and Miami Herald report that a Miami International Airport TSA worker has been arrested for beating up a co-worker who joked about his endowment after observing the assailant walk through a whole-body imager or “strip-search machine.”
The FCC is toyingwith reclassifying broadband under Title II of the Communications Act. If the agency rolls back the regulatory clock in this fashion, it will be a huge step backwards for innovation, investment, and quality in this field. How is it that everyone suddenly has collective amnesia about the past that Title II gave us? Doesn’t anyone remember getting their fingers pinched in black rotary dial phones of the Title II regulatory era? I do. Here’s what else that regulatory era gave us: Stagnant markets. Limited choice. Lackluster innovation. What else would you expect when you have price controls, rate-of-return proceedings, state PUC meddling, protected markets, etc. And despite all this revisionist history about Title II “protecting consumers,” the past it gave us was viciously anti-consumer and pro-regulated entity.
Is that the future you want for the Internet and the digital economy? That’s what’s at stake in this fight. Just say NO to a Rotary Dial Internet!
Multiple media sources are now reporting that the FCC, contrary to reports from earlier this week, has decided to go ahead with an effort to change the classification of broadband Internet service from a Title I “information service” to a Title II “telecommunications service,” if only to salvage the proposed rulemaking on the open and transparent Internet. (See stories on The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post as well as Ars Technica.)
Those of us who aren’t on the FCC’s official leak list will have to wait with the rest of the rabble to get a look at just how the FCC proposes to effect this radical change in communications law. Will it apply to all broadband Internet–including cable, fiber, DSL, satellite, wireless and broadband over power lines? Will the FCC propose to regulate only as much as needed to get the jurisdiction the D.C. Circuit says it doesn’t have under Title I to implement the NPRM, or will they throw in some additional provisions to achieve other goals–such as the reform of the Universal Service Fund? Will state and local regulators get to share in the fun of telling ISPs how best to run their business?
The Progress & Freedom Foundation today filed comments in the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) “Future of Media” proceeding. Berin Szoka, Ken Ferree, and I urged the FCC to “reject Chicken Little-esque calls for extreme media ‘reform’ solutions,” and counseled policymakers to move cautiously so that media reform can be “organic and bottom-up, not driven by heavy-handed, top-down industrial policies for the press.”
Our 79-page filing covers a wide range of ideas being examined by Washington policymakers to help struggling media outlets and unemployed journalists, or to expand public media / “public interest” content and regulation. Among the major issues explored in our filing:
First Amendment concerns implicated by government subsidies;
The pitfalls of imposing new “public interest” obligations on media operators;
How advertising restrictions could harm the provision of media and news;
Taxes, fees and other regulations to be avoided;
The limited role in reform that public media subsidies can play; and
Positive steps government could take.
We note that as “With many operators struggling to cope with intensifying competition, digitization, declining advertising budgets, and fragmenting audiences, some pundits and policymakers are wondering what the ‘future of media’ entails. The answer: Nobody knows.” While this uncertainty has put concerned policymakers at the ready to “help” the press, we warn that: “There is great danger in rash government intervention.” Instead, policymakers should be “careful to not inhibit potentially advantageous marketplace developments, even if some are highly disruptive.” Marketplace meddling, or government attempts to tinker with private media business models in the hopes that something new and better can be created, are misguided. Moreover, “Our constitutional traditions warn against it, history suggests it would be unwise, and practical impediments render such meddling largely unworkable, anyway.”
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
In this week’s episode of the Surprisingly Free Podcast, I talk to Tyler Cowen, professor of economics at George Mason University, general director of the Mercatus Center, and author of the popular economics blog Marginal Revolution. We discusses how the internet influences and changes practically everything. The conversation broadly centers on how the web allows us to find, distill, and sort information as never before, which has profoundly affected people’s consumption of culture and creation of their own economies. During the podcast Cowen touches on Lost and Battlestar Gallactica, the iPad, books, the future of the publishing industry, old and new media, Facebook, Twitter, ChatRoulette, and his favorite things on the internet.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
List of Major Comments in FCC “Future of Media” Proceeding
by Adam Thierer on May 10, 2010 · 8 comments
I’m keeping tabs on who filed “major” comments (more than a 10-15 pages) in the Federal Communications Commission’s “Future of Media” proceeding (GN Docket No. 10-25). As I noted last week, The Progress & Freedom Foundation submitted almost 80 pages of comments (single-spaced!) in the matter, so it’s something I care deeply about and will be tracking closely going forward.
Incidentally, the general consensus of those who filed (especially if you count “minor” comments) is fairly overwhelming: Bring on Big Government! Seriously, I only found a handful of comments that object strenuously to government meddling in media markets or that raised concerns about the potential for the State’s increasing involvement in the journalism profession. Even many of the affected industries appear to be suffering from a bit of Stockholm syndrome here. Most of them just play up the good things they are doing but barely utter a peep about the dangers of federal encroachment into the affairs of the Press.
Anyway, for those of you who care to track the gradual federalization of media and journalism, I think what you see below is a fairly comprehensive listing of the major filings submitted thus far in the FCC’s “Future of Media” proceeding. I’ll try to add more as I find them. You might also want to track what was filed in the Federal Trade Commission’s workshops on “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age.” Finally, if you care to learn more of this issue, I’m hosting an event on the morning of May 20th to discuss these issues in more detail.
Continue reading →