For the few that have not heard of Google Glass yet, it is a hands-free, wearable computer with an optical head-mounted display above one’s eye to provide information to the user and enable video recording of whatever a user sees. What’s recorded is stored in Google’s data centers and that data will be integrated with most Google products and services.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
From the various reports of briefings about the FCC’s planned rules for the 600 MHz incentive auction, two things appear clear. First, the FCC doesn’t trust market forces. And second, the FCC doesn’t want the highest bidders to win the spectrum.
They’re all actively preparing to enter the over-the-top online video business with their own streaming service or proprietary online programming to compete with Netflix, Hulu, and facilities-based pay-TV providers like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, DirecTV, Dish, AT&T, Verizon, and others.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
Consumers know the old adage — you get what you pay for. Somehow Netflix imagines it is owed whatever they want — and it does not have to pay anything for it.
This article explains the broad implications for the Internet of: America handing over the master key of the Internet to ICANN; and the European Parliament updating privacy law for the first time since 1995 nearly unanimously. As the Internet’s moorings increasingly detach from America, the Internet ship will enter the uncharted waters of Internet realpolitik.
With due credit to “Ripley’s Believe it or Not!,”® so much odd and bizarre is happening in Washington in the “name” of “U.S. wireless competition criticism” that the topic calls for its own collection of: “Believe it or Not!”® oddities.
As the dust has settled from the D.C. Circuit’s January 14th decision to vacate and remand the FCC Open Internet Order for another try, and from FCC Chairman Wheeler’s February 19th statement accepting the court’s invitation to propose open Internet rules that could pass court muster, what does it all this mean going forward?
Governments do not “compete” with companies. Governments tax, limit, police and judge companies. So when governments try and offer a similar service that private companies have long provided consumers, these governments[...]
Rather than enforcing European competition law against systemic abuses of dominance by the single most dominant company in Europe, this political deal surrenders inexplicable concessions, including defining Google’s 90 percent share as not dominant, claiming its multiple abuses of dominance are legal and implying Google did nothing wrong.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
Activists are freaking out about AT&T’s Sponsored Data plan because it defiles their utopian ideal of perfect Internet egalitarianism of universal, unlimited, free, downstream-bandwidth for edge creators.
Economics · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
Without market economic thinking and pricing that plans ahead and continually funds infrastructure investment, the EU will continue to fall further behind other countries around the world.
Google’s creeping militarization means Big Brother Inc. aspires to work more closely with Big Brother government.
Net neutrality activists’ criticism of AT&T’s new freebie for consumers called Sponsored Data is nonsensical.
Why are European Commission antitrust authorities bending over backwards to settle with Google? The EU’s apparent preference for settling, rather than prosecuting Google for antitrust violations, turns a blind eye[...]
FCC staff just muffed an easy opportunity to advance the IP transition on the FCC’s timetable in the National Broadband Plan. Apparently FCC staff missed the big picture here.
Google Glass’ easy eavesdropping on people may be illegal wiretapping. Two courts already have ruled in different class actions that Google can be sued for illegal wiretapping for “interceptions” of personal information without meaningful consent — in circumstances analogous to how Google Glass operates.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Legal Affairs
In sum, the need for modernizing America’s communications law is urgent and undeniable.
The FCC should beware of the siren song that government somehow can better allocate spectrum competitive inputs than market economics and competition can.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Liberty · Media
Mr. Ammori does us all a favor for elevating the important public question of whether or not Google, in particular, deserves any blame for its significant role in the NSA spy scandals.
Increasingly countries are requiring Google, Facebook, and Twitter, to route their traffic through the sovereign country’s domain extension, not their American dot.com addresses.
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