The Open Market Blog

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/29/2008

Last year, AT&T submitted to the FCC a petition for forbearance from some old reporting requirements that were designed back in the days of…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/29/2008

I reported last Thursday that the FCC was set to approve the long-ignored XM-Sirius merger. Yesterday, it finally came through… but hampered by…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/29/2008

A year and 90 days ago, Qwest gave the FCC a request for forbearance from complying with some outdated price controls. The FCC had a…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/25/2008

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court struck down the latest version of the Child Online Protection Act, an internet censorship bill. AmLaw Daily…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/24/2008

Courtney and I have been working for weeks on creating libertarian versions of the popular hilariously-captioned kitty pictures known as “lolcats.” Bureaucrash…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/24/2008

We have previously discussed how government often mandates online privacy violations through data retention mandates and tracking requirements. Now, Congress has tucked…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/24/2008

CNET News reports: A group of researchers from the University of Colorado and University of Washington could face both civil and criminal penalties for…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/24/2008

An interesting little tidbit: A small town in Minnesota is trying to borrow $25 million in bonds to install a fiber-optic network. But now…

• 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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…