If government information was made public online and in standard open formats, the online masses could be leveraged to help ensure the transparency and accountability that is the reason for making information public in the first place.
The Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission could bring much-needed clarification to the net neutrality debate by employing the regulatory analysis utilized by most federal agencies to assess proposed regulations.
This Article argues that lack of public safety communications interoperability is the result of what economist Mancur Olson called a collective action problem, and that it is the result of the national policy of public safety spectrum segregation and balkanization.
During the past several years, the Federal Communications Commission has engaged in a series of rulemakings to determine the regulatory status of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This paper holds that VoIP should be classified as an information service, rather than a telecommunications service, for several reasons.
Congress, state legislatures, and the Federal Communications Commission are all considering proposals to reform local video franchising to promote competitive entry. Consumers should welcome such reforms. This paper estimates that consumers pay an extra $8.4 billion annually in the form of higher rates and fees as a result of video franchise regulations.
Examining the economic evidence, this paper finds that state laws that impede electronic commerce in caskets would almost certainly fail a factual analysis used in the case Granholm v. Heald. This implies that such laws would be held unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause if a plaintiff brings a challenge similar to the one in Granholm.
This article aims to show that, despite the rhetoric, the radio spectrum commons model that has been proposed in the legal literature is not an alternative to command-and-control regulation, but in fact shares many of the same inefficiencies of that system. If the government is the controller of a commons—as proponents of a spectrum commons suggest it should be—then in allocating and managing the commons the government will very likely employ its existing inefficient processes.
This paper focuses on the effects of federal regulation of telecommunications. Key issues of interest are the effects of regulation on the prices, quantity and quality of service, along with the associated effects on consumer welfare and overall economic welfare. Regulations that primarily affect applications or uses of information that pass through the infrastructure are outside the scope of this study.
This paper explains the full extent of the orphan works problem and proposes a novel solution that is practical. It also examines and critiques other leading proposed solutions that the authors conclude are unworkable.
The recent push to replace UPC barcodes on all consumer goods with RFID tags has resulted in a backlash by privacy activists. Before we regulate, we should first confirm that privacy fears are not baseless and will not be constrained by market forces.
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