Gerald Faulhaber, Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn Law School, discusses his new paper in Communications & Convergence Review entitled Economics of Net Neutrality: A Review. Faulhaber delves into the network neutrality debate noting that consumers do not want complete neutrality since they approve of blocking content such as child pornography or malware. He explains that there is little evidence that violations of net neutrality have actually occurred, so that consumers today are getting as much neutrality as they want. Faulhaber submits that implementing prophylactic regulations will only stifle innovation and encourage rent seeking.
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Adam Thierer, senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in the Technology Policy Program, reviews the past year in technology policy and looks ahead to next year. Thierer first weighs in on net neutrality and upcoming FCC deliberations could that hatch a new regulatory regime for the internet. He then talks Google and antitrust, the proposed Comcast-NBC merger, and disputes between broadcasters and content providers. He also suggests that two issues — privacy and cyber security — will be at the forefront of tech policy debates in the coming year, pointing to support for do-not-track rules and to recent WikiLeaks and state secrets drama as momentum behind the respective issues.
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