Blog - Page 70

“New Political Tool: Text Messaging,” by Cathy Hong, Christian Science Monitor, 30 June 2005. The Christian Science Monitor has an excellent piece today about cellphone short message services (SMS), better known as text messaging. In particular, the author focuses on China, now the world’s largest cellphone market with an estimated 350 million subscribers. I have two connections with this story. During my first summer as an intern in Washington, D.C. I attended a a Capital Hill hearing for the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission. During the USCC hearing, “SARS in China: Implications for Media Control and the Economy”, one of the speakers testified that the Chinese government found covering up the SARS outbreak impossible, after tens of millions Read More ›

First, a welcome to all of our new readers. Grokster’s Loss is America’s Gain by Thomas W. Hazlett, Wall Street Journal, 29 June 2005, p. A14. The Price War For Broadband is Heating Up by Dionne Searcey, Wall Street Journal, 29 June 2005, p. D1. Thomas Hazlett, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, joins the chorus praising the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in MGM Studios vs. Grokster. The real title of this piece should have been “Why Brand X is good for America” – referring to the Supreme Court’s decision in National Cable and Telecommunications Association v. Brand X, which Hazlett writes makes a “bigger property rights mark” than Grokster (the Grokster case largely followed from the logic of the Read More ›

Despite high hopes, Orlando’s Wi-Fi network doesn’t attract enough users to justify the expense, according to Mark Schlueb writing in the Orlando Sentinel. … the service worked well — as many as 200 people using laptop or hand-held computers could log on at once to check e-mail or surf the Web … … only about 27 people a day, on average, accessed the free service. City officials said they couldn’t continue to justify the $1,800-a-month expense. See: “City Yanks Plug On Free Wireless Zone for Internet,” by Mark Schlueb, Orlando Sentinel, Jun. 21, 2005.