Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Without the ability to criticize unjust laws in powerful symbolic ways, we can't change them. And the point of a democracy is that people should be able to convince other people to change a law.
In 'Bush v. Gore,' five justices had a partisan outcome in mind and then made up the judicial principle to justify it, while claiming that the decision would not be precedent for any future cases.
I have tried to help build a framework that recaptures the First Amendment as a principle to empower all Americans, politically and personally, through access to plentiful, diverse communications spaces.
Both Republicans and Democrats can agree that more choices and lower prices in transportation would benefit consumers. Democrats would consider it 'smart government' and Republicans 'limited government.'
Even though the Internet touches every part of our lives, one person is to blame for potentially destroying its potential for innovation and freedom of expression: former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.
A ban on paid priority is central to any real net neutrality proposal, beginning with the Snowe-Dorgan Bill of 2006. Indeed, the notion of 'payment for priority' is what started the net neutrality fight.
Google (and Bing and Yahoo!) don't 'owe' any company traffic. If a company has to spend more on advertising on Google, in addition to investing in search-engine-optimization, that is not a violation of any law.
The CEO of AT&T told an interviewer back in 2005 that he wanted to introduce a new business model to the Internet: charging companies like Google and Yahoo! to reliably reach Internet users on the AT&T network.
I'm all in favor of the FTC investigating companies when it believes there is proper cause to do so. An investigation, however, can lead to political pressure to bring a case, even if such a case is unwarranted.
Charter's merger sales pitch is pretty straightforward: it argues that it has always been too small to bully Internet companies, TV makers, and its own customers, so it has'un-cable' practices they hope to extend.
Google pays advertisers based not just on payment per click but also by number of clicks. The interplay between the two sets the prices, so a government-regulated price for 'equal access' might be difficult to set.
The Startup Act should give all Americans, not just immigrants, a better shot at being tomorrow's engineers and entrepreneurs. And that opportunity could begin at a young age with education in computer programming.
Over the course of a year - from January 2014 to March 2015 - millions of Americans, hundreds of businesses, and dozens of policymakers weighed in at the Federal Communications Commission in favor of net neutrality.
Charter hired me - which, to be honest, took some humility on its part, since I have helped lead public campaigns against cable companies like Charter - to advise it in crafting its commitment to network neutrality.
Internet users should be able to choose where to go online and which applications to use. Comcast, say, shouldn't be allowed to block Skype just because it could siphon the communications giant's telephone business.
Google's competitors argue that Google designs its search display to promote Google 'products' like Google Maps, Google Places, and Google Shopping, ahead of competitors like MapQuest, Yelp, and product-search sites.
Data can generally travel the speed of light unless networks are congested. When there's congestion, usually the cheapest and best thing is simply to add capacity generally, not to prioritize certain sites over others.
'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
Facebook refuses to let Google index or display content from its site. Facebook has partnered with Bing to make its results more social. Is Facebook acting to leverage its dominance in social towards a dominance in search?
The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive.
'Bush v. Gore' gave us a president who lost the popular vote, eventually appointed two more justices, and led us into a war of choice while failing to regulate a financial system dependent on toxic mortgage-backed derivatives.
I find personalized search convenient - I read stories on my Facebook feed, my Twitter feed, daily email services, and my iPhone's Flipboard app, and would love to be able to focus my searches on just those particular services.
Ever since the end of Medieval feudalism, and the writings of John Locke, we have understood the importance of being able to buy and sell one's own property, including books and watches, both for reasons of economics and liberty.
Before the Internet, we were in a different sort of dark age. We had to wait to hear news on TV at night or in print the next day. We had to go to record stores to find new music. Cocktail party debates couldn't be settled on the spot.
If someone has copyright over some piece of your stuff, you can sell it without permission from the copyright holder because the copyright holder can only control the 'first-sale.' The Supreme Court has recognized this doctrine since 1908.
In software and many other online markets, even dominant firms face potential threats because of the low costs for competitors to enter those markets. Threats more easily emerge because of better or newer technologies leapfrogging older ones.
'Network neutrality' is sometimes called 'Internet freedom' or 'Internet openness' and is a legal principle that would forbid cable and phone companies like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast from blocking some websites or providing special priority to others.
A rule against paid fast lanes would encourage additional capacity; a rule permitting paid fast lanes would simply encourage cable companies to create congested slow lanes on the Internet so they could make money by selling fast lanes to big companies.
The iPhone will forever be associated with the inventive genius of Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley. But the roots of innovation can be traced back - from one genius to another, at least - back to the genius who put the phone in iPhone: Alexander Graham Bell.
Net neutrality is the idea that Internet service providers (ISPs) should treat all traffic that goes through their networks the same, not offering preferential treatment to some websites over others or charging some companies arbitrary fees to reach users.
In 1984, the Federal Trade Commission released a report that explained why taxis could charge customers exorbitant prices for dismal service. The simple reason, according to the 176-page study: lack of competition in the market. The culprit: local governments.
The current FCC chairman, Tom Wheeler, is highly regarded, but some distrust him because he is the former head lobbyist of both the cable and wireless phone industries. He's also made some statements suggesting he doesn't understand or opposes network neutrality.
In the early 1990s, Americans used their home phone lines to connect their desktop computers to the Internet via ISPs like AOL, Earthlink, or Netzero. Back then, the ISPs didn't have cost-effective technology to select particular sites for blocking or privileging.
Net neutrality sounds wonky and technical but is actually quite simple. It would keep the Internet as it has always been - cable and phone companies would remain mere gateways to all sites, rather than gatekeepers determining where users can go and what innovators can offer them.
By definition, the Singularity means that machines would be smarter than us, and, in their wisdom, they can innovate new technologies. The innovations would come so quickly, and increasingly quickly, that the innovation would make Moore's Law seem as antiquated as Hammurabi's Code.
The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn't encourage more authorship - it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films.
The Supreme Court has crafted doctrines such as 'fair use,' which permits copying materials for criticism, parody, and transformative uses, and has ruled that abstract ideas are not subject to copyright, because courts will not punish people for merely using an abstract concept in speech.
The FCC banned throttling for good reason, namely that Internet service providers should not bias their networks toward some applications or classes of applications. Biasing the network interferes with user choice, innovation, decisions of application makers, and the competitive marketplace.
Under the Constitution, federal law trumps both state and city law. But antitrust law allows states some exceptional leeway to adopt anticompetitive business regulations, out of respect for states' rights to regulate business. This federal respect for states' rights does not extend to cities.
To me, freedom of speech and debate are necessary inputs in solving any of our nation's problems, from homelessness and economic inequality to banking, the environment, and national security. Freedom of speech is what Larry Lessig would call a 'root' issue; working on free speech is striking at a root issue.
When Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, declaring that all men were created equal, he owned slaves. Women couldn't vote. But, throughout history, our abolitionists, suffragettes, and civil rights leaders called on our nation, in reality, to live up to the nation's professed ideals in that Declaration.
Under the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act, Tumblr, YouTube, Reddit, WordPress, and Facebook aren't responsible for the copyright infringement of each of their millions of users, so long as they take down specific posts, videos, or images when notified by copyright holders. But copyright holders thought that wasn't good enough.
Thinking about free speech brought me to media regulation, as Americans access so much of their political and cultural speech through mass media. That led me to work on the FCC's media ownership rules beginning in 2005 to fight media consolidation, working with those at Georgetown's IPR, Media Access Project, Free Press, and others.
If a company is not a monopoly, then the law assumes market competition can restrain the company's actions. No problem. If a monopoly exists, but the monopoly does not engage in acts designed to destroy competition, then we can assume that it earned and is keeping its monopoly the pro-consumer way: by out-innovating its competitors.
A report released by the Partnership for a New American Economy and the Partnership for New York City predicts that by 2018, there will be 800,000 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) jobs in the United States that require a master's degree or higher - and only around 550,000 American-graduates with this training.
Competitors argue that Google rigs its search algorithms to demote listings for competing search engines. Many of the allegations of demotion come generally from sites of pretty questionable quality, such as Nextag and Foundem. Some of Google's primary competitors in 'specialized search' clearly place well in search results - Amazon and Yelp.