The Open Market Blog

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/22/2008

My colleague Ryan Radia has an excellent post at TLF about Comcast’s decision to resist New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s attempts to…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/22/2008

Ars reports that the movie industry has gathered together a task force to create standards for making 3D movies available in the home. Now…

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/22/2008

The U.S. government transfers about $17 billion from taxpayers to farmers in an average year. Every man, woman, and child in the country gives more…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/22/2008

Cord Blomquist has an interesting post at TLF about the Google-Viacom lawsuit. He points out that forcing YouTube to take down infringing…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/22/2008

A stealth assault is being mounted on the Constitution’s state-action doctrine in a case pending before the Supreme Court, Fitzgerald v. Barnstable School Committee. The Supreme…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/22/2008

TiVo, the popular DVR company, is partnering with Amazon.com to allow TV viewers to buy products while watching their recorded TV shows. This is…

• By: Fran Smith
• 07/22/2008

The Financial Times has terrific reviews of opera — witty, trenchant, and caustic when reviewing some of the avant-garde European productions.

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/22/2008

Last week, I introduced a new feature called the Philosopher's Corner, where I will examine libertarian issues from the point of view of justice,…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 07/22/2008

The Associated Press was shocked to discover that, gasp!, the oil companies actually pay back their investors.  A new AP story is headlined:  “AP…

• By: Ivan Osorio
• 07/21/2008

This afternoon, the Senate Republican Conference held a hearing on an ongoing attempt to undermine the secret ballot process in union organizing elections. Specifically…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/21/2008

Ars reports on a novel use of in-car GPS technology: getting you out of undeserved speeding tickets. Apparently, a teenager was erroneously ticketed…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/21/2008

A Dutch court ruled today that a group of researchers who figured out how to break into RFID tags used in smartcards around the…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/21/2008

Two down, one to go. Two commissioners are now on board with approving the XM-Sirius merger, which has already been held up for…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/21/2008

Ars reports that Intel is lobbying the FCC to require all cable boxes to contain ethernet ports. Ostensibly to support device openness, Intel’s…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/19/2008

Franklin Raines, a liberal power-broker, mismanaged government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae so badly that a federal bailout of it is now planned.  He received…

• By: Al Canata
• 07/18/2008

To add to Alex Harris’ posting on ISP’s standing up for themselves…. Maybe the ISPs ought to use a pocketbook issue…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/18/2008

It is in times of national emergencies that measures infringing on privacy and civil liberties are advocated — and sometimes rushed through without even being…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/18/2008

Historically, jurisdictions with judicial elections tended to be somewhat more anti-business than those that didn’t have judicial elections.  But in recent years, voters in some moderate and conservative…

• By: Myron Ebell
• 07/17/2008

11: 46 AM – Approaching Constitution Hall, where Gore will be speaking, the first brochure handed to me from a vegan group, then another from…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/17/2008

Over a year ago, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson refused to push for reforms of fraud-ridden government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae, even though colleagues in the Bush Administration had…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/17/2008

U.S. immigration law is full of contradictions.  On the one hand, U.S. immigration laws keep out skilled immigrants who would help our economy,…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/17/2008

Australia’s government is requiring the country’s websites to include ratings of age-appropriateness similar to those used for movies and games. Further, websites deemed only…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/17/2008

Google revealed a little more today about how the company’s mysterious search algorithm works. In order to keep improving search – and making sure…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

You might remember the controversial Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which in 1998 retroactively extended copyrights that were set to expire (to life…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

A lawyer is suing Google because his ads didn’t generate any business for him. The attorney, Hal Levitte, placed ads with Google and paid…

• By: Fran Smith
• 07/16/2008

In a posting on Discover Magazine’s blog today, it was reported that this summer the largest “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

MSNBC has an interesting piece on New York's new food-labelling law. New York is the first city in the country to require restaurants to put…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/16/2008

In the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins says we should get rid of the shaky, fraud-ridden government-backed mortgage giant Fannie Mae in its current…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

Congress is at it again, and once again the victim is NebuAd. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce is sending threatening letters to…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/16/2008

Professor Ilya Somin explains how New York City taxpayers are being fleeced to pay for a new Yankee Stadium.  And the Washington Examiner describes…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

Cable companies are fighting the impending FCC ruling against Comcast for violating net neutrality principles. They seek the freedom to try out different…

• By: Fran Smith
• 07/16/2008

Another nail in the coffin for biofuels and government support. A new report from the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) released…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

As I've mentioned in previous posts, my academic background is in political philosophy and I tend to approach policy issues from a rights-based perspective.

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/16/2008

The Library of Congress is having problems with digital preservation, due to copyright laws. Though the Librarian of Congress gets to carve out exceptions…

• By: Eli Lehrer
• 07/15/2008

For all the talk of a “rescue plan” for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, I think that there’s a much better solution: let them…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/15/2008

Today, a network administrator for the city of San Francisco was arrested for “taking control of the city’s computer network and locking administrators out,”…

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/15/2008

The Washington Post has a story today about the difficulty young people are having finding summer jobs. Their unemployment rate is over 18%, compared…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/15/2008

The talk surrounding global warming has mostly been about regulation: carbon taxes, cap-and-trade schemes, or - worse - outright mandates. But technology can offer solutions…

• By: Fran Smith
• 07/15/2008

Lots of good material in the World Trade Organization’s annual World Trade Report 2008. Released today, the report, “Trade in a Globalizing World,”…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/15/2008

Pretty much everyone has gotten into the Google-Yahoo thicket. First, it was the companies themselves, by intentionally leaving time for regulators to kill the…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/15/2008

Senator Charles Schumer recently triggered a massive bank failure by publicizing a letter claiming IndyMac Bank was on the verge of collapse.  That caused a run on…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/15/2008

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson is now pushing a multibillion dollar bailout of the government-sponsored mortgage giants, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  But as the…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/15/2008

There's an interesting discussion on the Technology Liberation Front, a popular blog for those interested in liberating technology from the hands of government, about…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/15/2008

Viacom has just agreed to let Google anonymize the data it will be handing over to Viacom as part of the copyright infringement lawsuit…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/14/2008

Both the House and Senate have passed similar mortgage bailout bills by lopsided margins, although Bush has threatened to veto them.   But the American…