ftc

The House of Representatives’ Democrat majority FY2020 budget includes refunding the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.

Government often seems quite adept at solving yesterday’s problems, building or protecting systems that are irrelevant today.

All the rage last week amongst the mis-informed masses – and the mass media misinforming them – was a pro-Network Neutrality video burger joint Burger King (BK) bizarrely extruded.

There must have been a time, a moment, in each instance when freedom and liberty triumphed that the people exclaimed “Finally!” Today is such a day for internet freedom.

The federal government has spent the last two centuries-plus willfully ignoring the Constitution. With ever-increasing frequency and intensity, the Feds have drifted further and further from their charter.

What’s quintessential illegal monopoly behavior?

Net neutrality, once a concept only discussed in arcane telecommunications legal policy settings has become a quite popular topic

After years of investigations, lawsuits, and fines, a checkered past of patent abuse and exploitation appears to have caught up with a major U.S. chip developer.

A Ninth Circuit Court decision overturned an FTC enforcement action against AT&T for “throttling” broadband data speeds by definitively ruling that the FTC did not have any legal jurisdiction over AT&T (and other common carriers) because of the explicit common carrier exemption in the FTC’s core Section 5 legal authority.

The FCC’s Open Internet order and proposed Title II privacy rules divided what was unified. For privacy, it broke what was working. Confused what was clear. Complicated what was simple. Unprotected what they sought to protect. Created more costs than benefits. Since the Internet’s beginning the FTC has had privacy authority over information services.

The Sunday Telegraph reports that the EU is poised to fine Google an EU record ~€3b for “web search monopoly abuse” and that “Google will be banned from continuing to manipulate search results to favour itself and harm rivals.”

Why does the company that by far collects the most private information that the FCC claims it wants to protect, and that also has the worst consumer privacy protection record with the FTC, (Google), get 99% exempted from the telecom and cable privacy protections expected of telephone, broadband, cable and satellite providers?

When one’s actions demonstrably create a worse rather than better outcome net-net, like the FCC’s new Title II ISP privacy policy does, others would justifiably consider it a mistake.