The Open Market Blog

• 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…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/14/2008

On Friday, the FCC rejected complaints from public interest groups whining that some Chicago and Milwaukee stations did not give a lot of coverage…

• By: John Berlau
• 07/14/2008

The near-collapse of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may have taken the markets and the financial media by surprise, but is something that CEI schlolars…

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/14/2008

The UK has quietly become one of the most-surveilled societies on earth. The isle sports an eye-popping one surveillance camera for every fourteen people.

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/14/2008

The NFL Network (NFLN) has been quite aggressive in its demands for cable providers to include it in their lineups. Back in 2006, Adam Thierer…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/14/2008

According to tech news site ArsTechnica, Companies looking for a competitive edge over their rivals have in recent years been making use of a…

• By: Cord Blomquist
• 07/14/2008

The rights of homeowners to form associations is under attack in Maryland, where some residents believe that the state should forbid homeowners associations HOAs from…

• By: Marlo Lewis, Jr.
• 07/14/2008

The White House announced today that President Bush will lift the executive ban on oil exploration in the Outer Continental Shelf. This action in…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/14/2008

I reported earlier on the failings of the Universal Service Fund. Now, the convoluted transfer scheme has a new critic: the GAO. The…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/14/2008

Following in the wake of Friday’s massive bank failure, and the Senate’s passage of an economically destructive and pork-filled mortgage bailout bill that…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/14/2008

The Washington Examiner today pointed out on page 17 that thanks to advances in drilling technology, it’s now far safer to drill for oil off…

• By: Doug Bandow
• 07/14/2008

On of the most charming aspects of the European Union is its willingness to prosecute people for the most minor offenses, such as satisfying their…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/12/2008

IndyMac Bank was seized Friday by federal regulators after the “second largest US bank failure in history.”  (The bank had $32 billion in assets).  But rather than…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/11/2008

The Senate has passed the bloated mortgage bailout bill by a 63-to-5 vote, over objections from Senators like Jim DeMint (R-SC) who say it will rip…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/11/2008

Senators Ron Wyden and Olympia Snowe are proposing a bill that would ban state and local governments from raising taxes on cell phones any…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/11/2008

As everyone who has read The Wisdom of the Crowds knows, prediction markets are excellent predictors of future events like elections. In fact,…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/11/2008

The FCC is set to begin testing white space broadcasts for interference with current technology, such as wireless microphones. The NFL and ESPN –…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/11/2008

The libertarian CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, called out Bill Gates in a speech on the virtues of capitalism. Gates’ view is that…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/11/2008

Get ready for a horrible new net neutrality precedent. Chairman Martin has publicly stated that he wants the FCC to rule against Comcast in…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/10/2008

Ars reports that Verizon has just settled a case claiming that the company violated California law by imposing early termination fees on the customers…

• By: Ryan Young
• 07/10/2008

Dairy farmers in the EU are upset that milk prices are lower than they prefer. Production quotas were raised by two percent in…

• By: Alex Harris
• 07/10/2008

Last month, I posted about the rollout of Europe’s first WiMax network in Amsterdam. Just after my post, Sprint announced that it will…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/10/2008

The mortgage bailout bill sailing through Congress gets weirder and weirder.  It turns out that in order to circumvent the Constitution, which says that tax…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/10/2008

Ted Frank explains in the Wall Street Journal just how feeble courts are at reining in excessive punitive damages awards, contrary to what…

• By: Hans Bader
• 07/10/2008

The Virginia House of Delegates rejected a Democratic plan to raise several taxes to pay for transportion.  The proposal was the same as one earlier…