I’ve been floating around in conservative policy circles for 30 years and I have spent much of that time covering media policy and child safety issues. My time in conservative circles began in ...
Corbin Barthold invited me on Tech Freedom’s “Tech Policy Podcast” to discuss the history of antitrust and competition policy over the past half century. We covered a huge range of cases an...
https://techliberation.com/2022/05/10/podcast-remember-faang/
The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has kicked off a new project called “Digital Platforms and American Life,” which will bring together a variety of scholars to answer the question: How ...
What explains the rebirth of analog era media? Many people (including me!) predicted that vinyl records, turntables, broadcast TV antennas and even printed books seemed destined for the dustbin o...
A major policy battle has developed regarding the wisdom of regulating social media platforms in the United States, with the internet’s most important law potentially in the crosshairs. Leader...
President Trump and his allies have gone to war with social media sites and digital communications platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Google. Decrying supposed anti-conservative “bias,” Tr...
In the US there is a tangle of communications laws that were added over decades by Congress as–one-by-one–broadcast, cable, and satellite technologies transformed the TV marketplace. The prim...
https://techliberation.com/2019/10/15/locast-and-deteriorating-tv-laws/
Originally published on 9/9/19 at The Bridge as, “Beware Calls for Government to ‘Save the Press‘” —– by Adam Thierer & Andrea O’Sullivan Anytime someone proposes a top-down, govern...
https://techliberation.com/2019/09/09/socialize-journalism-in-order-to-save-it/
Slate recently published an astonishing piece of revisionist history under the title, “Bring Back the Golden Age of Broadcast Regulation,” which suggested that the old media regulatory model ...
https://techliberation.com/2019/06/07/there-was-no-golden-age-of-broadcast-regulation/
A series of recent studies have shown the centrality of social media bots to the spread of “low credibility” information online. Automated amplification, the process by which bots help share ...
There has been an increasing outcry recently from conservatives that social media is conspiring to silence their voices. Leading voices including President Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz hav...
https://techliberation.com/2018/09/06/the-problem-with-calls-for-social-media-fairness/
For decades, cities, the FCC, and Congress have mandated that cable TV operators carry certain types of TV programming, including public access channels, local broadcast channels, local public te...
https://techliberation.com/2018/08/16/on-cable-operators-junior-varsity-first-amendment-rights/
With Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in town this week for a political flogging, you might think that this is darkest hour for the social networking giant. Facebook stands at a regulatory crossroads...
Broadcast license renewal challenges have troubled libertarians and free speech advocates for decades. Despite our efforts (and our law journal articles on the abuse of the licensing process), li...
By Brent Skorup and Melody Calkins Recently, the FCC sought comments for its Media Modernization Initiative in its effort to “eliminate or modify regulations that are outdated, unnecessary, or...
https://techliberation.com/2017/08/15/modernizing-us-media-regulations-our-fcc-comments/
Title II allows the FCC to determine what content and media Internet access providers must transmit on their own private networks, so the First Amendment has constantly dogged the FCC’s “net...
https://techliberation.com/2016/10/27/title-ii-broadcast-regulation-and-the-first-amendment/
The FCC appears to be dragging the TV industry, which is increasingly app- and Internet-based, into years of rulemakings, unnecessary standards development and oversight, and drawn-out lawsuits. ...
I came across an article last week in the AV Club that caught my eye. The title is: “The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave us shitty cell service, expensive cable.” The Telecom Act is the...
https://techliberation.com/2016/08/16/no-the-telecom-act-didnt-destroy-phone-and-tv-competition/
The FCC’s transaction reviews have received substantial scholarly criticism lately. The FCC has increasingly used its license transaction reviews as an opportunity to engage in ad hoc merger re...
For decades Congress has gradually deregulated communications and media. This poses a significant threat to the FCC’s jurisdiction because it is the primary regulator of communications and medi...
With great fanfare, FCC Chairman Thomas Wheeler is calling for sweeping changes to the way cable TV set-top boxes work. In an essay published Jan. 27 by Re/Code, Wheeler began by citing the high ...
https://techliberation.com/2016/02/02/the-fcc-targets-cable-set-top-boxes-why-now/
Last Friday I attended a fascinating conference hosted by the Duke Law School’s Center for Innovation Policy about television regulation and competition. It’s remarkable how quickly televisio...
At the same time FilmOn, an Aereo look-alike, is seeking a compulsory license to broadcast TV content, free market advocates in Congress and officials at the Copyright Office are trying to remove...
Congress is considering reforming television laws and solicited comment from the public last month. On Friday, I submitted a letter encouraging the reform effort. I attached the paper Adam and I ...
https://techliberation.com/2015/01/27/television-is-competitive/
As 2014 draws to a close, we take a look back at the most-read posts from the past year at The Technology Liberation Front. Thank you for reading, and enjoy. 10. New York’s financial regulator ...
https://techliberation.com/2014/12/30/the-10-most-read-posts-of-2014/
There’s a small but influential number of tech reporters and scholars who seem to delight in making the US sound like a broadband and technology backwater. A new Mercatus working paper by Rosly...
https://techliberation.com/2014/08/13/us-broadband-is-not-falling-behind/
Even though few things are getting passed this Congress, the pressure is on to reauthorize the Satellite Television Extension and Localism Act (STELA) before it expires at the end of this year. ...
https://techliberation.com/2014/08/08/is-stela-the-vehicle-for-video-reform/
Congressional debates about STELA reauthorization have resurrected the notion that TV stations “must provide a free service” because they “are using public spectrum.” This notion, which i...
Shortly after Tom Wheeler assumed the Chairmanship at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), he summed up his regulatory philosophy as “competition, competition, competition.” Promoting...
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently sought additional comment on whether it should eliminate its network non-duplication and syndicated exclusivity rules (known as the “broad...