Blog - Page 14

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 ›

The New York Times reports that officials at the Federal Trade Commission are exploring a “Do Not Track” option on websites and browsers similar to the “Do Not Call” list which prevents unwanted telemarketing calls. Meanwhile, the White House has established an interagency panel to ensure that any restrictions do not impede law enforcement and national security efforts. A “Do Not Track” feature won’t protect consumers from unwanted ads, only relevant ads they are more likely to find useful. That’s the whole purpose of tracking. Advertisers, who underwrite much of the cost of Internet content, applications and services, will lose an efficient opportunity to connect with potential customers. For what? Meanwhile, even if there will be no tracking for commercial Read More ›

Legions of consumers are not taking reasonable steps to combat botnets, leading some some experts to suggest that ISPs should monitor broadband connections and block botnet-generated traffic.
A botnet is a network of servers or PCs that have been surreptitiously infected with malicious software for the purpose of generating Internet traffic without the owners’ knowledge or consent for some criminal purpose. Antivirus software offered by vendors such as McAfee, Microsoft or Symantec eliminate malicious software, but many consumers don’t utilize these products even when they are available for free.

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Commenting on routine contract (e.g. “retransmission”) negotiations between Fox and Cablevision, Michael J. Copps of the Federal Communications Commission had this to say: For a broadcaster to pull programming from the Internet for a cable company’s subscribers, as apparently happened here, directly threatens the open Internet. This was yet another instance revealing how vulnerable the Internet is to discrimination and gate-keeper control absent clear rules of the road. Whoa. Copps is saying net neutrality regulation should apply not only to Internet access providers, but also to content providers. That’s not exactly mainstream. You’ve got to appreciate the guy’s intellectual honesty. In May, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said: “I have been clear about what the FCC should not do in the Read More ›