InternetPolicy.net

FCC chairman launches blog

The chairman of the US Federal Communications Commission started a blog yesterday and it has already attracted an avalance of comments from readers. Many of the comments focus on controversial issues now before the Commission, like broadband over powerlines, penalties for "indecent" content, excessive concentration of ownership in the broadcasting industry, and letting wi-fi use unoccupied TV channels.

In his first posting chairman Powell wrote: "One reason I am participating in AlwaysOn Network's blog is to hear from the tech community directly and to try to get beyond the traditional inside the Beltway Washington world where lobbyists filter the techies. I am looking forward to an open, transparent and meritocracy-based communication—attributes that bloggers are famous for! Regulated interests have about an 80 year head start on the entrepreneurial tech community when it comes to informing regulators what they want and need, but if anyone can make up for that, Silicon Valley can..."

We can only hope that the signal/noise ratio will quickly improve in the comments, lest he decide that a direct, open public channel is a waste of his time.

"China's Digital Future"

China Digital News has extensive blog coverage of the two-day conference on "China's Digital Future," which finished earlier today at the University of California's Berkeley campus. Presentation summaries are given for Alex Zixiang Tan on the structure of regulations; Izumi Aizu on growth in China's net; Andrew McLaughlin on Chinese domain names; Lawrence Lessig on "core blindness;" Jie Cheng, Cindy Cohn and Jonathan Zittrain on regulation and control of the Internet; Bill Xia on how "The Great Fire Wall" works; Jack Qiu on e-government in China... and that's only half the reports and just a few of the links.

Cato Institute lights a fire

Adam Thierer, director of the Cato Institute's telecommunications studies division, has written a screed entitled "Howard Dean's Plan for the Internet: Collectivism In, Property Rights Out." In it Thierer lambasts not just Dean but Lawrence Lessig, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, and anyone else questioning the commercialization of the Internet and intellectual property in general. That provoked bitter rejoinders from the likes of David Weinberger ("Inept Cato Analysis of Dean Net Policy"), David Isenberg ("Adam Thierer's latest blast - incompetent or dishonest?"), Howard Reingold ("Cato can't distinguish collectivism from collective action ") and Lessig ("Cato'$ Late$t"). We won't add our two cents, except to note that this is one of the hottest online policy debates we've seen in quite a while.

US: Internet law year in review

Doug Isenberg posted a review of developments in US Internet law during 2003 in his GigaLaw.com weblog. Among the significant events cited were passage of the "Truth in Domain Names Act" and the CAN-SPAM Act, expiration of the Internet Tax Freedom Act on 1 November and the SCO Group's legal challenges to Linux's software rights. Significant issues predicted for 2004 included the Supreme Court revisiting the Child Online Protection Act (which restricts the online publication of material "harmful to minors") and the regulation of Internet telephony.

ITU recommends WSIS side-events

Richard Swetenham's always-useful QuickLinks points to an ITU NewsLog item that lists interesting side-events at the upcoming WSIS, with hyperlinks to more info about their time, place and content.

New blog: "The Internet in Asia"

Thanks to Lokman Tsui for alerting us to a blog started a few days ago by the Singapore Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University. Monitor it for news about "The Internet in Asia."

ITU Policy Newsblog

The Internetional Telecommunication Union has started a policy-oriented weblog. Each news item is categorized, and each category is available as a separate RSS newsfeed...or you can get them all in one feed. The NewsLog is here. All of the RSS channels are listed here.