For years, Hollywood has used the negotiation of international trade agreements to push for heavy regulation of the Internet in the name of "fighting online piracy." As a general rule, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) and the non-Hollywood industry trade associations (with the notable exception of the tech industry)...

In what is undoubtedly the best Labor Day present the Department of Justice ever gave America, DOJ has filed to block the AT&T/T-Mobile merger in court. One should not, however, expect AT&T to give up easily. Indeed, AT&T has already said it will fight the DoJ...

I feel a good deal of sympathy for FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski over the ongoing fight between Fox and Cablevision. My brother the educator likes to say that "responsibility without authority is trauma." Or, in other words, if you are responsible for something but don't actually have the authority to...

I am neither surprised nor outraged at the recent news that members of the Information Technology Industry Council (ITIC) are picking up where the FCC "secret meetings" left off and trying to come up with a net neutrality consensus framework. To me, it seems rather sad and funny. My...

Politicians, news reporters, and now voters have become obsessed with deficit reduction. Unfortunately, this "deficit cutting fever" now threatens the money previously allocated for the broadband stimulus programs. For those unfamiliar with this program, the President announced today that the latest grant awards of $795 million would be...

Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has been running ads against network neutrality in Mike Doyle's (D-PA) district in Pittsburgh. Doyle's response? A letter to FCC Chairman Genachowski telling him to ignore faux populist FUD from AFP, hold firm, and move full speed ahead to protect consumers while

Want to know why the Obama Administration can't seem to get its "messaging" together? Consider the recent case of The Hon. Phil Verveer, who managed to echo a set of Republican attack bullets at an event at the Media Institute, a think tank funded by big...

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts and NBC CEO Jeff Zucker went in front of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust and Competition and the House Commerce Subcommittee on Telecommunications to defend their proposed merger. And while "">Say Anything" was actually produced by competitor 20th Century Fox, that seemed...

As a longtime Washington lobbyist (albeit on the "white hat" consumer advocate side) I propose a new metric for measuring antitrust impact of mergers, the uniquely Washington "Trade Association Scale." How many trade associations/lobbying groups will you qualify for after the merger? If the number is too high, that shows...