The Competitive Enterprise Institute Daily Update
Issues in the News
1. CONGRESS
Lawmakers prepare to increase the federal fuel economy standards for new cars.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: General Counsel Sam Kazman on the effect of the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations:
“Eventually, studies may demonstrate that increased size and reduced mass can offset each other to produce cars that are both safer and more fuel-efficient. Costs and reliability of such designs, however, are still unknown, and it is much too early to make this approach a basis for ramping up CAFE. In any event, an analysis issued last March by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found (as it has for over a decade), that within every vehicle group—cars, SUVs, etc.—”the heavier vehicles, like bigger ones, generally had lower death rates.”
2. INTERNET
A United Nations agency warns of the danger of “cybersquatters” and others trying to manipulate the Internet domain registry system.
CEI Experts Available to Comment: Vice President for Policy Wayne Crews on why management of the Internet should be kept out of UN hands:
“Kofi Annan, Coming to a Computer Near You! The Internet’s long run as a global cyberzone of freedom—where governments take a “hands off” approach—is in jeopardy. Preparing for next month’s U.N.-sponsored “World Summit on the Information Society” (or WSIS) in Tunisia, the European Union and others are moving aggressively to set the stage for an as-yet unspecified U.N. body to assert control over Internet operations and policies now largely under the purview of the U.S. In recent meetings, for an example, an EU spokesman asserted that no single country should have final authority over this “global resource.”
3. LEGAL
Viacom sues Google for over $1 billion over alleged copyright infringement on YouTube.
CEI Expert Available to Comment: Adjunct Scholar James Plummer on how markets can help protect intellectual property:
“The rapid progression of technology and, concomitantly, consumer attitudes and behavior, poses problems for the content industries’ dominant paradigms and business models as configured today. Enforcement costs for protection of old models—encouraged and calcified by congressional expansion of the length of copyright terms—are mounting. Some rights holders are now developing promising new business models that recognize these realities. To encourage this trend, lawmakers should consider dismantling regulatory barriers—particularly antitrust—obstructing the development of potentially superior alternatives to legal copyright protection.”