Please don't miss my new Daily Caller Op-ed "The Looming Government Spectrum Scandal" -- here.

• It's Part 5 of my ongoing Government Spectrum Waste, Fraud & Abuse Research Series.

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Government Spectrum Waste Fraud and Abuse Research Series

Part 1: U.S. Government's Obsolete and Wasteful Spectrum Hoarding and Rationing

Rhetoric aside, the Administration drew an underappreciated and principled line in defending property rights in its deft partial support of the Free Culture petition to the White House to “make unlocking cellphones legal.”

For those paying attention to the whole Administration statement, the Administration included a critical caveat protecting property and contractual rights: i.e. one should be able to legally unlock a cellphone “if you have paid for your mobile device, and aren’t bound by a service agreement or other obligation.”

Kudos to Robert Litan and Hal Singer for the clarity-of-thought and free market policy wisdom in their new book: “The Need for Speed: A New Framework for Telecommunications Policy for the 21^st Century.” Here is the link to the book at Amazon.

As Professor Crawford continues her book tour advocating for a broadband utopia of an ultra-fast, government-subsidized, public-utility-regulated, broadband network with net neutrality, the supposed-facts undergirding her proposal, are crumbling away.

Free culture activist, Derek Khanna, has thrust himself into the limelight again with yet more misrepresentations of copyright law. His latest copyright-neutering effort is a “call to arms” to “the digital generation” to oppose a Librarian of Congress 1998 DMCA copyright ruling, that it is illegal to break into a cell-phone’s software in order to “unlock” it -- without the permission of, or payment to, the software’s owner.  

If the Internet Association is presumptuous enough to unilaterally deem itself “the unified voice of the Internet economy,” I guess we should not be surprised that on the same day that our duly-elected President delivered the State of the Union, the unelected President of the Internet Association would be presumptuous enough to deliver the “State of the Internet.” 

Please see my Daily Caller Op-ed about the latest ITU argument for asserting control of the Internet: "ITU in search of relevance in the Internet Age" -- here.

Please see the full pictorial analysis in “Googleopoly X: Google’s Dominance is Spreading at an Accelerating Rate" – here.”

• (See Googleopoly I–IX at www.Googleopoly.net.)

The conclusions and recommendations for antitrust authorities are reprinted below.

• Note: Given the old adage is true that a picture is worth a thousand words, please don’t miss the Googleopoly pictorial charts that: make this complex subject much simpler and more accessible; tell this important story more interestingly and clearly, and enable the reader to better understand the critically important big picture dynamics addressed in this analysis.

A. Conclusions:

Please see my Daily Caller op-ed "Why Europe is Falling Behind America in Broadband" -- here.

• It's Part 3 of Modernization Consensus Series.

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Modernization Consensus Series

(Note: This research series previews strategic developments that could encourage consensus to modernize obsolete communications law.)

Google’s recent public actions appear to be a tacit admission that its antitrust risks in the EU are more serious than it has acknowledged publicly.

• First, Google’s recent newspaper settlements -- with the Belgian and the French media -- signal that Google appreciates it is now considered by the EU to be a de facto essential facility for consumer information access.
• Second, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt’s sudden, rapid acceleration of his selling of his personal Google stock holdings trumpet his apparent insider pessimism about Google’s growing antitrust, property-infringement, privacy and tax liabilities.     

Google’s Content Settlements