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.
The Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998 was designed to promote the growth of the Internet by placing a moratorium on state and local taxation of Internet access and the[...]
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
I was pleased that Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly accepted my invitation to participate as a keynoter at the Free State Foundation’s Sixth Annual Telecom Policy Conference on March 18. We engaged in an informative and interesting lunchtime conversation, and I am grateful to Commissioner O’Rielly for indulging my questions.I was pleased that Federal Communications Commissioner Michael O’Rielly accepted my invitation to participate as a keynoter at the Free State Foundation’s Sixth Annual Telecom Policy Conference on March 18. We engaged in an informative and interesting lunchtime conversation, and I am grateful to Commissioner O’Rielly for indulging my questions.
Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom
Network Neutrality is socialism for the Internet – it guarantees everyone equal amounts of nothing.
Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Politics
On March 14, the Obama administration announced it was initiating a process to transfer oversight of the Internet from the United States to some yet-to-be-defined global entity.
Assistant Secretary of Commerce Lawrence Strickling said, “The timing is right to start the transition process.”
You don’t need to be a credentialed foreign-policy expert, however, to harbor reservations concerning the plan to turn over management of key Internet functions to what the Commerce Department called the “global multi-stakeholder community.”
Environment/Energy · Featured · Government · Internet/Telecom · Politics
President Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, and 28 Senate Democrats remain fixated on “dangerous manmade climate change.” In the process, they are ignoring real threats to our living standards and very lives.
Just one year ago, the Wall Street Journal has reported, saboteurs attacked a power substation near San Jose, California. They cut fiber optic cables and shot up 17 transformers, causing them to overheat and fail. Apparently, they wanted to trigger a monumental blackout. Thankfully, grid operators were able to reroute power and avoid blackouts.
A Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official called the attack “purposeful, extremely well planned and executed by professionals who had expert training.” Other utility experts said it could have been a “dress rehearsal” for much bigger operation – one that could take down much of the entire US or even North American electricity grid for weeks, months or even a year. That would have a devastating effect on our economy, living standards and lives. Indeed, many people would likely die, as food, fuel and even safe drinking water become unavailable.
Government · Internet/Telecom · Liberty · Regulation
Crony Socialism is, in part, the government cutting special deals for certain companies – at the expense of other companies, and the free market. It is particularly pathetic when companies publicly troll for this treatment. It’s almost as if they’ve given up on actually, you know, trying.
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.
Economics · Featured · Health Care · Internet/Telecom · Regulation
The solution to government interference restricting innovation in the tech sector isn’t more government. But that’s exactly what governments proffer all the time.
Anyone who has followed communications law and policy for a number of years – and I’ve been doing so for over thirty-five years – knows that the marketplace environment has changed dramatically in the last “number” of years. And undeniably – although at times some do try to deny it – the change has been in the direction of more competition and more choice for consumers.
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.
The Broadcasters are actually the beneficiaries of decades of government good grace – well beyond the uber-tilted Retransmission laws.
The Federal Communications Commission has been much in the news recently — and deservedly so — owing to its ill-conceived “Critical Information Needs” study. Thankfully, after a public outcry, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler recently canceled this study.
Tomorrow the House Judiciary Committee will hold the hearing “Exploring Alternative Solutions on the Internet Sales Tax Issue.” Taking some time to explore the Constitutional challenges of current proposals which mandate the collection of taxes by businesses across state lines and an examining the potential for the radical expansion of government would be a good place to focus.
Natural selection is the gradual process by which biological traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of the effect of inherited traits on the differential reproductive success of organisms interacting with their environment….
The term “natural selection” was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, which is now called selective breeding.
All of this sounds an awful lot like a free market economy. Species are companies — the market, the environment. Only the capitalism evolution timeline is infinitely compressed. It doesn’t take thousands of years for changes to occur — they happen instantaneously, constantly, incessantly. And the price for natural selection changes for the worse are paid just as fast — a good idea today can kill you tomorrow.
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?
Scott Cleland has released a new video detailing the pressing need in America for a new communications law.
Network Neutrality is sadly, yet again back from the dead. Because the Barack Obama Administration keeps insisting on resurrecting it.
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