Blog - Page 13

At a Saturday morning panel discussion at the Federalist Society moderated by Chief Judge David B. Sentelle of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, I asked whether any of the panelists feel that the Federal Trade Commission lacks jurisdiction pursuant to the FTC Act to combat against deceptive business practices and unfair competition in the market for broadband services. Parul P. Desai, Policy Analyst at Consumers Union responded that there are limitations on the ability of consumer advocates to litigate which do not apply in actions by the Federal Communications Commission. Maureeen K. Ohlhausen, an attorney with Wilkinson, Barker, Knauer, LLP who has an FTC background, added that those limitations do not apply in the context of Read More ›

Rumors that the Federal Communications Commission may be planning to enact network neutrality regulation three days before Christmas (see previous post) seem odd in light of a observation President Obama made on Nov. 3 [A]s I reflect on what’s happened over the last two years, one of the things that I think has not been managed by me as well as it needed to be was finding the right balance in making sure that businesses have rules of the road and are treating customers fairly and — whether it’s their credit cards or insurance or their mortgages — but also making absolutely clear that the only way America succeeds is if businesses are succeeding. The reason we’ve got a unparalleled Read More ›

A Federal Communications Commission spokesperson, responding to rumors that the commission may enact network neutrality regulation three days before Christmas, told a publication called The Hill that if government regulates broadband, it’s not “regulation.” Reminds me of former President Richard Nixon’s logic, e.g., if the president does it, it is not a crime. Net Neutrality is about preventing anyone from regulating the Internet. There are some cable and phone companies out there that want to decide which apps you should get on your phone, which Internet sites you should look at, and what online videos you can download. That’s regulating the Internet — and that’s what the FCC is trying to stop. I guess it depends on what the term Read More ›

Senator Rockefeller, chairman of the committee with jurisdiction for the Federal Communications Commission, wishes there were something that could be done to cut down on the number of choices Americans enjoy for news, commentary and entertainment: I hunger for quality news. I’m tired of the right and the left. There’s a little bug inside of me which wants to get the FCC to say to Fox and to MSNBC “Out. Off. End. Goodbye.” Would be a big favor to political discourse, our ability to do our work here in Congress and to the American people to be able to talk with each other and have some faith in their government and more importantly in their future. We need slimmed down Read More ›

Our Sr. Fellow George Gilder now commands the “most read” space on the Wall Street Journal opinion page today with “California’s Destructive Green Jobs Lobby”. The information adds nails to the coffin that voters in the Golden State have fashioned for themselves. It has been a familiar theme for Discovery News (discoverynews.org) for weeks. You might think that the California calamity opens opportunities for other states, notably nearby Washington, where voters just turned down an income tax on the wealthy (e.g., entrepreneurs, small businesses, investors in new jobs) and where the next state legislative session is not about new taxes, but major surgery on spending. Washington has energy for power-hungry computer companies and it has an outstanding employee base. Texas Read More ›

Comcast executive David L. Cohen had this to say in remarks at the Brookings Institution: The Internet is too big and too important for government to ignore… and it is too complex and too dynamic for government to regulate intrusively. Let?s learn from the Internet itself – it is flourishing as a self-governing, self-healing ecosystem, and the more we can take advantage of that model, coupled with reasonable, consensus-based regulation, the better. TEXT, AUDIO

George Gilder writes that the campaign to reduce greenhouse gasses wastes scarce and precious technological and entrepreneurial resources indispensable to the nation’s future, in today’s Wall Street Journal. About whether green companies create new jobs, Gilder says, In a parody of supply-side economics, advocates of [California’s] AB 32 envisage the substitution of alternative energy sources that create new revenue sources, new jobs and industries. Their economic model sees new wealth emerge from jobs dismantling the existing energy economy and replacing it with a medieval system of windmills and solar collectors. By this logic we could all get rich by razing the existing housing plant and replacing it with new-fangled tents.

Speaking of Tim Wu, in a recent New York Times interview the author of The Master Switch says he thinks capitalism “by its nature, is about conflict, and ultimately the life and death of firms.” He adds that some entrepreneurs are not motivated by money or comfort. Instead, they are motivated by power, and the information industries offer possibilities unavailable to people who sell orange juice or rubber boots, a power over people’s minds. Wu is referring to men like Steve Jobs of Apple and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, one or both of whom he deems an “information emperor.” To argue that Jobs and Zuckerberg crave power over people’s minds is almost to equate them with some of the fictional Read More ›

Ryan Singel explains why Google may not dominate the net, at Wired. And it has nothing to do with antitrust scrutiny of the company’s activities, such as the flap over Google’s purchase of ITA Software. Google slayed Microsoft and Yahoo in the battle for search supremacy but it has been slowly losing momentum in what may turn out to be the real war — the one for the display ad revenues — to an unlikely foe: the dorm-room-born Facebook. At a recent conference sponsored by the Technology Policy Institute, Robert W. Crandall and Charles L. Jackson shared a draft of a paper they are working on analyzing the IBM, AT&T and Microsoft antitrust cases. Crandall and Jackson argue that in Read More ›

Prof. Tim Wu has a provocative essay in Saturday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, arguing in effect that a company which is successful is by definition a monopoly that should be regulated. Fortunately, the antitrust laws don’t punish companies that are successful as a result of superior skill, foresight and industry; only those who engage in anticompetitive conduct. That would not include Google, Facebook, eBay, Apple nor Amazon so far as I know. Every businessperson dreams of a monopoly advantage. The pursuit of a monopoly advantage either justifies the high rent that a retailer pays to an airport or the owner of a shopping mall in exchange for an exclusive right to serve coffee or ice cream on the Read More ›