shouting loudly

On this FreePress page, Senator John Kerry has asked what you think we should do to fix broadband policy. Here is my answer: Force incumbents to interconnect & lease access Dear Sen. Kerry, Thank you for taking on this country’s appalling failure to compete internationally in the race for widespread adoption of top-speed internet service. [...]

As CNet reports, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-SD) is still pushing for net neutrality legislation. Our 3.5 regular readers can guess how I feel about this.

In its latest attempt to block the FCC from imposing modest interconnection requirements on the 700 MHz spectrum auction, Verizon filed suit this week in the DC Circuit. The Commission wants end users to be able to use the device of their choosing and the applications of their choosing–what Tim Wu calls “Wireless Carterfone.” For [...]

Despite bold promises to the contrary, Yahoo! will not help users to remix video from the search portal’s upcoming presidential debate. From April until last Friday, Yahoo! was billing its upcoming quasi-debate between Democratic presidential candidates as “the first-ever online-only presidential mashup.” As Wired explains, they were offering to upload the raw footage to Yahoo’s [...]

In a series begun yesterday, the Seattle Times is taking on the sorry state of the media industry and media policy. Editorial Page Editor James Vesely has a brief introduction. Yesterday, they ran an opinion piece by FCC Commissioner Michael Copps. Today, it’s Penn Law School luminary Ed Baker. Today, they also ran a scathing [...]

For reasons you will see below, I am suddenly compelled to write a brief post calling for a national single-payer health care plan. This is a substantial deviation from the blog’s all-things-media theme; thus, here’s a link to a discussion of how Michael Moore’s SiCKO has touched off a baseless insurance industry smear campaign of [...]

Rumor has it that the uncut version of Manhunt 2 is available for download through torrent files online. You may remember Manhunt 2 as a PS2/PSP/Wii game that was slapped with an “Adults Only” rating by the ESRB, a self-regulatory industry body, until the publisher modified the game for a “Mature” rating. The earlier rating [...]

In this weekend’s New York Times Magazine, an excellent profile of music mogul Rick Rubin suggests Sony’s recent hiring of Rubin as Columbia Records co-head just might save both the company and the music industry. Rubin certainly seems bent on changing the music industry. He sounds like a Free Culture activist, scolding the industry for [...]