Blog - Page 10

Yesterday the Tennessee Regulatory Authority (the state’s public utility commission) heard testimony about reforming intrastate access charges (i.e, the rates long-distance carriers pay to local telephone companies when calls are handed off between long-distance and local telecom providers). The rates have been set very high, historically, to generate significant subsidies for making local service affordable and ubiquitous. In my own remarks, I pointed out that the hidden subsidies embedded in intrastate access charges are a tax on consumers. Defenders of the status quo like to avoid that word, but a tax is a tax. Although fully justifiable when established in 1984 upon the breakup of Ma Bell, the hidden subsidies are simply inappropriate in today’s dynamic, competitive marketplace. Some might Read More ›

Scott Walter, writing in Philanthropy Daily, has more on the vast left-wing conspiracy behind network neutrality regulation that was recently revealed by John Fund at the Wall Street Journal. Walter, who cites new evidence on the “discreet relationship” between the Pew Charitable Trusts and Free Press, wonders why “news journalists” did not report on the connections between several “nonpartisan” foundations, which also include the Ford Foundation, and Free Press? A segment of the journalism profession is a core constituency of Free Press, as has been reported. Pew presents itself as objective, but could it really have a partisan agenda?

Apple Computer co-founder Steve Wozniak has a poignant, but factually problematic, plea for Internet regulation in The Atlantic.

Please, I beg you, open your senses to the will of the people to keep the Internet as free as possible. Local ISP’s should provide connection to the Internet but then it should be treated as though you own those wires and can choose what to do with them when and how you want to, as long as you don’t destruct them. I don’t want to feel that whichever content supplier had the best government connections or paid the most money determined what I can watch and for how much. This is the monopolistic approach and not representative of a truly free market in the case of today’s Internet.

The free and open Internet Wozniak celebrates actually evolved in the absence of regulation. William E. Kennard, FCC chairman during the Clinton administration, declared that the “best decision government ever made with respect to the Internet was the decision … NOT to impose regulation on it.”
Meanwhile, back when the computer age was getting started and telephone services were ridiculed and reviled by Lily Tomlin (see SNL clip from 1976) and others, there existed a crucial – albeit frequently overlooked – symbiosis between monopoly and regulation. You don’t hear about it from Tomlin or Wozniak, but the Bell System was a legally-sanctioned and closely regulated monopoly.

While grieving that life for a young computer engineer sucked in the old days when phone and cable companies were monopolies, Wozniak alludes to several persistent misconceptions about the telephone and cable industries that ignore pervasive regulatory failure and provide no justification for Internet regulation.

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Over at the Washington Times, Internet regulation is being described as an “unholy scheme.” According to Editor Emeritus Wesley Pruden, this is a first step toward content control. Anyone paying attention can see how this would be a first step toward revival of the so-called Fairness Doctrine, sought by Barack Obama and the Democrats since he first arrived in Washington. The Fairness Doctrine would require broadcasters, definitely including the cable-TV networks, to provide airtime for anyone criticized by someone else on the air. That, too, sounds good to the inattentive and the well-meaning. What could be nicer than never having to hear anyone say discouraging things about you? John Fund at the Wall Street Journal reveals how Internet regulation is Read More ›

The Federal Communications Commission acted to regulate the Internet by a partisan 3-2 vote. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell warned that there will be pushback. Meanwhile, the courts get another chance to jurisdictional limits on the FCC. Legally, the agency is on shaky ground. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit recently ruled that there are significant limitations on the agency’s jurisdiction to regulate broadband services. Rumors indicate the commission is planning to assert jurisdiction on the basis of somewhat obscure statutory provisions which predate the Internet as we know it, and that were drafted for unrelated purposes.

If the United States were growing as well as our Israeli ally, we’d be in fat city right now. The news from the little Mediterranean powerhouse just keeps looking up. GDP rose 3.8 percent last quarter, down from 4.5 percent in the previous quarter, but still very brisk. Technology stocks overwhelmingly lead the way. George Gilder’s thesis in The Israel Test is thus validated daily. Imagine a developed country that sells more to China than it buys!

A writer for the Financial Times takes aim at Google for … what? Google’s ambitions are so sweeping, the theatres in which its campaign is being advanced so dispersed, that it is not always easy to trace the outlines of the broader war it is fighting…. As Allen Weiner, an analyst at Gartner, points out, Google could eventually assume a truly scary cross-media dominance. All the information about user behaviour collected across multiple cloud services, mixed with its core search data, could give it better insight into users than anyone – and the ability to match that with personalised advertising campaigns delivered across different services and devices. Okay, Google is trying to compete. It is trying to be disruptive. It Read More ›

Mortimer Zuckerman, writing in the Wall Street Journal, argues for a new federal bureaucracy to protect against cyber threats. We should think of cyberattacks as guided missiles and respond similarly–intercept them and retaliate. This means we need a federal agency dedicated to defending our various networks. You cannot expect the private sector to know how–or to have the money–to defend against a nation-state attack in a cyberwar. One suggestion recommended by Mr. Clarke is that the government create a Cyber Defense Administration. He’s right. Clearly, defending the U.S. from cyberattacks should be one of our prime strategic objectives. Few nations have used computer networks as extensively as we have to control electric power grids, airlines, railroads, banking and military support. Read More ›

This Gmail user who writes for the Daily Mail apparently doesn’t think she should have to receive targeted ads in exchange for free email service. The adverts were being specifically targeted at me because of what I had written in a private email to a friend. Though I found the discovery deeply creepy, I carried on using Gmail, noticing all the time that I couldn’t write anything to anyone without Gmail offering me comments, suggestions and temptations. As the article points out, only machines read and process the data — and the information isn’t sold to nor shared with advertisers. So what’s the point? That Google may somehow fail to safeguard the data? The company could pay dearly if that Read More ›