Featured · Internet/Telecom · Podcast
Chris Casey, Managing Director at WindRock Wealth Management, sits down with the founder of Cryptohippie and author, Paul Rosenberg to talk about Bitcoin. Casey and Rosenberg answer all the most frequently asked question regarding the virtual currency.
The cromnibus version of ITFA expires this fall, just in time for the annual budget fights on Capitol Hill. First passed in 1998 as a temporary law, ITFA has been renewed for more seasons than sleeper hit shows like Arrested Development and Invader Zim.
Well, to be frank, I had never considered my contention that the public interest standard is unconstitutional to mean that the FCC itself is unlawful. To my mind, I simply had suggested that the lawfulness of actions taken pursuant to the public interest standard should be questioned.
There are many dimensions to the hack of Sony that, by all accounts, now appears to be a North Korean cyberattack. Certainly, the attack ought to make us all aware that, regardless of debates about the niceties of the labels applied, the U.S. has entered a new era in which cyberwarfare (and response to cyberattacks) will constitute an important element of our national security strategy.
Budgets/Taxes · Featured · Podcast
Competitive Enterprise Institute Associate Director of Technology Studies Ryan Radia joins The Heartland Institute’s Budget and Tax News managing editor Jesse Hathaway to talk about the Marketplace Fairness Act, a proposed “Internet sales tax” receiving heated debate during the recently concluded past session of Congress.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Podcast
Jim Lakely, communications director at The Heartland Institute and co-director of Heartland’s Center on the Digital Economy, talked with one of the best free-market tech experts in Washington: Less Government President Seton Motley, who also happens to be a policy advisor to Heartland.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Podcast
Co-Director of Heartland’s Center on the Digital Economy, Jim Lakely discusses Net Neutrality with guest host Mike Siegel on the Howie Carr Show. Siegel and Lakely talk about the latest Net Neutrality news and what it would mean for the Internet.
Last year, the U.S. Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA), a plan to allow local and state governments to collect sales taxes on retailers outside their jurisdiction, with 15 Republican senators joining 54 Democrats to support shaking down online retailers for more tax revenue.
I was gratified by the excellent attendance at the Free State Foundation’s program last Friday titled, “Thinking the Unthinkable: Imposing the ‘Utility Model’ on Internet Providers.” If you weren’t there, you missed what was a very important event – one that, in light of the substantive discussions that occurred, likely will play an important role going forward in the debate over the Federal Communications Commission’s consideration of the imposition of new net neutrality mandates.
Unless you only get your news via the Jurassic Press – or you are a government school victim who as a result doesn’t pay attention to anything at all – you are now intimately familiar with the on-camera stylings of Jonathan Gruber.
On September 25, the Mercatus Center, a research and outreach organization that promotes market-oriented solutions from George Mason University, did a presentation on net neutrality. The speaker, research fellow in the technology policy program Brent Skorup, gave a wide overview of the net neutrality subject. Skorup discussed, among other things, how the Internet works, the working definition of net neutrality, exceptions to the rule, and the options the FCC is exploring.
Net neutrality is a solution in search of a problem. Over the last decade, the FCC has alleged only a few potential net neutrality problems, and in each of these few cases, the FCC was able to satisfactorily resolve them without Title II authority.
Featured · Internet/Telecom · Podcast
Communications Director Jim Lakely sits down with the President of Less Government, Seton Motley, to discuss net neutrality in light of President Obama’s recent remarks on the subject.
The FCC is considering administratively bypassing Congress and unilaterally reversing longstanding U.S. Internet policy in law with an administrative maneuver that could have sweeping and unintended negative consequences for U.S. trade and foreign policy.
Google’s latest misdirection ploy is to focus the media and the new EC on its new “peak” PR narrative that its search and Android dominance is at a “peak” — with the implication that Google’s market position is fleeting and will only go down from here because fast-changing innovation and competition will naturally supplant it.
Currently the FCC is considering reversing the legal status of American Internet services from lightly-regulated information services to utility-regulated “telecommunications” services in response to a 2014 appeals court decision that limited a portion of the FCC’s net neutrality regulatory authority.
Rep. Henry Waxman, Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee,wrote the FCC to propose that the FCC, in its pending Open Internet order remand, “reclassif[y] broadband providers as telecommunications services and then using the modern [Title I] authority of section 706 to set bright-line rules to prevent blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization.”
Conservatives and Libertarians inherently have little faith or trust in government. We know the institution is inherently flawed – and self-serving. Government violates the Wallet Rule. Which is: You go out on a Friday night with your wallet. You go out the following Friday night with my wallet. On which night are you going to have more fun?
Recently two towns, Chattanooga, Tennessee, and the City of Wilson, North Carolina, have petitioned the federal government, via the FCC, complaining that state laws are constraining them from the municipal provision of broadband services, that is, from building a government owned network (GON). That is, these municipalities want to expend resources to build and operate broadband systems, without following any of regulations that govern private sector providers. To overcome the state’s rightful authority the city governments have proposed that the FCC preempt state law and empower municipalities in ways that upset the political structure of the U.S.
Earlier this year, the Obama administration asked ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to create a means of overseeing the Internet after U.S. governance is scheduled to end in another year. The administration decided not to maintain the current U.S. minimum-oversight role.
NEWS: The Heartlander
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