Archive
Category: Regulation and Government
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FCC adopts new network neutrality rules on unstable jurisdictional ground
After months of consultation and over 100 000 submissions, the Federal Communications Commission has adopted an order which requires providers of a “broadband internet access service” to comply with its three principles of network neutrality: The Commission adopts three basic protections that are grounded in broadly accepted Internet norms, as well as our own prior decisions.… Read more →
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Guardian interview with Professor Tim Wu: the Internet as a teenager
The Guardian is running an interview with Professor Tim Wu, who recently published The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires . I’m about three quarters of the way through the book, which offers a refreshingly detailed comparison between regulation of early communications networks in the 19th and 20th centuries and the future… Read more →
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European Electronic Communications Package moves closer to UK transposition
The UK government is preparing to transpose Directive 2002/21/EC on a common regulatory framework for electronic communications networks and services (the Framework) into UK law. The Framework is a new regulatory package that will affect how service providers supply email, telecommunications and internet access services, but it seems to have received very little attention. The… Read more →
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WikiLeaks roundup: a selection of the best analysis
The WikiLeaks controversy continues to capture headlines and provoke vitriol from governments around the world. Most reactions, however, have been surprisingly unsophisticated. Commentators repeatedly conflate WIkiLeaks the platform with its spokesperson, Julian Assange (who is, whatever your opinion of the man, largely irrelevant), assume the platform’s actions are unlawful (probably not — and this is… Read more →
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British ISPs to face regulatory pressure over internet pornography
Representatives of the Her Majesty’s government will meet with ISPs and lobbyists to discuss whether, and how, access to internet pornography should be controlled. The meeting comes days after Tory backbencher Claire Perry said the availability of such materials is like ‘a fire is burning out of control’. The Member wants mandatory access controls on… Read more →
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Ed Vaizey clarifies UK government’s position on net neutrality
The recent controversy about Ed Vaizey’s purported abandonment of network neutrality was probably overhyped. In Parliament today, Andrew Smith (Labor MP, East Oxford) asked the following question: To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills if he will make it his policy to ensure that internet service providers do not discriminate against… Read more →
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Network neutrality dead in the UK?
Ed Vaizey, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, has made comments in a speech which suggest that he favours abandonment of the neutrality (non-discrimination) principle in internet traffic management. The comments have, perhaps rightly, triggered an avalanche of vitriolic abuse. It is worth setting out the Minister’s remarks in full: The issues… Read more →
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Information monopolists as cyclic products of network effects: Tim Wu
Tim Wu’s excellent new book, The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, chronicles a history of communications policy and the long-term behaviour of firms in information industries. His basic thesis is that such firms acquire market power by a combination of network effects and industry consolidation, then exert a form of regulatory… Read more →
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Saudi Arabia blocks Facebook
First Pakistan, then Bangladesh, Iran and — if anecdotal reports are to be believed — China. Now Saudi Arabia has reportedly blocked Facebook, on the basis that the website “crossed a line” in not conforming to the “values” of the country. It could turn out to be just another Mohammed-cartoon incident, but this raises a… Read more →
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Tax strategies under the microscope
Fascinating article on the strategies employed by multinational technology firms to minimise corporate income taxation by funneling income into tax havens: Google’s income shifting – involving strategies known to lawyers as the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” – helped reduce its overseas tax rate to 2.4 per cent, the lowest of the top five… Read more →