Digital Liberty advocates for a consumer-driven market free from heavy regulation or taxation of the Internet, technology, telecommunications, video games, and media.
Bad Proposals
Biden FCC’s Digital Discrimination Order is Overbroad and Unworkable
By James Erwin One to 218. No, that’s not the teacher-to-student ratio in Mumbai elementary schools (that would be a measly 1:36). That’s the number of pages in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) authorizing the FCC to embark on its digital discrimination rulemaking to the number of pages…
Bad Proposals
Net Neutrality May Have Slowed Down the Internet
Amid much hue and cry, apocalyptic predictions, and advocacy from “comedian” John Oliver’s HBO show, the FCC revoked the Open Internet Order in 2017 (effective 2018). Widely promoted as “Net Neutrality,” the policy had been adopted by the FCC in 2014 after public pressure by then-President Obama,…
Uncategorized
The Mullin USF Bill Is Worse Than We Thought
By James Erwin Last week, we wrote about the push by some Republicans require edge providers to contribute to the Universal Service Fund (USF) to help cover its shortfalls. Now that a bill has been introduced by Senators Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) and Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), we realize that we…
Bad Proposals
New Taxes On Tech Companies Won’t Fix USF
By James Erwin The Universal Service Fund (USF) is in trouble and has been for some time. Its current funding mechanism does not raise enough revenue to consistently support the outlays demanded by the programs it funds, and reform is badly needed. Sadly, but unsurprisingly, some in Washington want…
Uncategorized
Who Benefits from Title II Internet?
By James Erwin I am not a lawyer and have never been to law school, but most recovering law students I know tell me one of the most important questions to ask in each case is sui generis – Latin for “who benefits?” Today, the Federal Communications Commission…
Bad Proposals
What’s the Problem with Usage-Based Billing?
By James Erwin Usage-based billing, or UBB for short, is common practice across most industries. You get billed for the amount of electricity you use at home, the amount of gas burned to heat your apartment, and even the number of hours a lawyer works for you. The broadband industry…
Content Moderation
Should Bureaucrats Police Social Media?
This Fourth of July, while fireworks illuminated the night sky above the Washington Monument in celebration of the cherished freedoms guaranteed to us as Americans, the judicial system bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers was considering novel threats to those very freedoms. Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary…
Broadband
Two Cheers for the BEAD Allocations
It’s finally here. On Monday, more than eighteen months after President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the administration has at last released each state’s broadband grant allocations. The Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program will distribute $42.5 billion to states to expand broadband to rural…
Content Moderation
Democratic Senators Pressure Tech CEOs To Rehire Staffers for Social Media Censorship
Last week, Democratic Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Peter Welch (D-V.T.), and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) penned a letter in an effort to pressure CEOs of Meta, Alphabet and Twitter to rehire recently laid off content moderation employees. In other words, Democrats want big tech companies to continue controversial content moderation…