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At CES, the FCC signaled that it opposed any effort by Congress to give the FCC policy direction or to establish any checks and balances on the FCC in authorizing incentive auctions of prime TV broadcast spectrum.
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post "FCC Seeks Unbounded Spectrum Auction Authority" to see why the the FCC's lack of regulatory humility here is so stunning.
Usually one of the hardest things to prove in an antitrust case is anti-competitive intent and motive, but Google’s new CEO Larry Page has made that much easier for antitrust authorities by unabashedly tying and leveraging Google’s search dominance with Google+ in a myriad of overt and covert ways.
To learn Google's "grand plan" and what the Google+ antitrust "smoking gun" is, please read my Forbes Tech Capitalist post: The Google+ Antitrust Smoking Gun.
Since most people focus on how the Internet is changing the world, few focus on the reverse -- how much the world is changing the Internet.
See My Forbes Tech Capitalist blog post to learn the "Seven Ways the World is Changing the Internet."
Google’s recent ~$1b 3-year deal with Mozilla for Google to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox browser users, which comprise over a quarter of the global browser/search market, has much broader and more serious antitrust implications for Google’s already very tenuous antitrust situation than most everyone appreciates.
Important free market communications legislation introduced in mid-December warrants flagging because it brings needed attention to a real and growing problem, how obsolete communications law stifles innovation, growth and consumer benefit.
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post on the DeMint-Scalise bill, “The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act.”
This week an FCC Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) ordered Comcast to carry The Tennis Channel in the same tier and channel neighborhood as The Golf Channel and Versus, another sports channel.
1. Implements Obsolete Law: The section of law at issue here, Section 616 of the 1992 Cable Act, is predicated on early 1990s market conditions of cable being a monopoly video distributor with large ownership interests in cable channels. Two decades later, that market assessment predicate is obsolete as cable now has only 60% of the video distribution market and dramatically less ownership interests in cable channels. At core the FCC has to decide if it is fair, sound or legitimate competition policy to completely ignore current competition facts.
To see how the call for the FCC to investigate the allegation that Verizon is blocking Google Wallet is a misinformed Emily Litella rant, please see my Forbes Tech Capitalist Blog post here.
The bipartisan Senate letter to the FTC calling for a "thorough investigation" of Google's alleged antitrust violations has broader implications than many appreciate.
Please see my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here.
The House Manager’s Amendment to the pending House Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) fixed the major legitimate problems with the original bill, effectively isolating the small but extremely vociferous minority of SOPA opponents, especially Google.
See my Forbes Tech Capitalist post here for a political outlook of the SOPA/PIPA anti-piracy legislation, which is likely to become law in 2012.
Many thanks to Adam Thierer of the Technology Liberation Front, for selecting my book, Search & Destroy, as a top twenty most Important Cyber-Law & Info-Tech Policy books of 2011 because “it represented the beginning of an articulation of a philosophy of “cyber-conservatism.” I also thank Adam for his critical and insightful review of Search & Destroy, which clearly delineates his principled cyber-libertarian differences with my principled “cyber-conservative” views.