The FCC issued its opinion and order in the Comcast dispute. There will certainly be a flurry of press and blog coverage over the next few days. Some will champion the decision, and others will attack it. There is plenty to digest. My initial thoughts are below the fold.

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This year, the TPRC will showcase a very strong program. Details below the fold.

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Scott Hemphill has posted an excellent, thoughtful paper on network neutrality. I’ll post the abstract along with a few comments on the paper below the fold:

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Last week, I was busy and so I tried to follow the discussion; in fact, I had a few discussions in “real space” with colleagues about some of the posts. But I did not post anything; so here goes, a little late.
It’s been a fantastic discussion on a wide array of [...]

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Query: Do those who rely heavily on error cost analysis also account for accuracy benefits? Should they?
Error costs are the costs of making a mistake. We generally would like to minimize them. But how do we minimize them? We might be more careful and invest more time or other resources [...]

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I’ve just posted an essay on ssrn that explores the economics of speech and the First Amendment. (The abstract is below the fold.) The essay is meant to be a work in progress, an exploratory essay, and potentially a seed for future work. [Do people still use ssrn for rough works in [...]

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Does the public choice critique of government boil down to the following (threat)?
“Don’t regulate me or I’ll capture you!” [This would be a nice title for an article, no?]
Of course, no one ever says this. It would be bad PR and antagonistic, perhaps raising the costs of capture, I suppose. It might [...]

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A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at the Fordham Intellectual Property, Media and Entertainment Law Journal symposium, Where Do We Go From Here? In fact, I gave two talks, one on a copyright panel and another on a trademark panel. But really, I gave one talk that extended across both panels. [...]

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Frank has a nice post over at Concurring Opinions that blasts the DOJ’s ex parte comments to the FCC on network neutrality.  Scott Bradner does the same here.
Barbara van Schewick and I have just posted a paper, Network Neutrality and the Economics of an Information Superhighway: A Reply to Professor Yoo, on the Social Science Research [...]

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I am visiting at Fordham Law School this semester and will teach an Advanced Copyright Law Seminar.  We’ll read and comment on various scholarly articles.  We’ll also discuss some cases, reform proposals, the Orphan Works Report, and other items.  I am having the students write brief (1-page) reviews of articles (one brief review per class) [...]

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Tim Wu and friends have launched AltLaw, a free, publicly accessible, easily searchable database of federal cases (not all of them, but a growing number).  This is a great idea and an admirable public service.  Of course, court decisions are public domain content—we all own them or you could say no one owns them.  But [...]

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Papers from the Jan 29-30 conference, Designing Cyberinfrastructure
for Collaboration and Innovation, have been published as a special
issue of First Monday:  http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_6/  
This is a very interesting set of papers.  I participated in the conference and learned a tremendous amount.

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I have finally posted my review of Yochai Benkler’s excellent book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom.  It is a somewhat atypical book review in that I situate the book within cultural environmentalism.  (I almost titled the review, Boyle, Benkler, and Beyond, but that seemed a bit corny.)  I welcome comments.  Abstract [...]

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Tim Wu has another paper on network neutrality, but this one aims at the wireless industry. The paper is getting plenty of attention in DC. Tim presented it recently at an FTC hearing on broadband competition policy, and it was discussed briefly in a Washinton Post article. The paper is interesting, important, [...]

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Read this fantastic post by Rob Merges at Patently-O. 

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Many people have struggled to define culture, and I have struggled in my current project on cultural environmentalism to come up with a workable definition.  Below are some thoughts; I welcome comments and suggestions on additional sources or perspectives that might help in my attempt to describe the cultural environment.  (Of course, wikipedia has a [...]

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As he has done in the past, Dennis provides a very useful overview of the issues and perspectives on this important case.  Check out Microsoft v. AT&T: Transnational Patent Law At The Supreme Court.  I have not read the briefs yet, but the so-called “molecular conservation” argument seems to fit neatly with the statutory language.  [...]

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I need to get reactivated as a blogger.  I’ve been busy wrapping up the semester and working on a few writing projects, two of which are on ssrn:  (1) Spillovers in a much revised and expanded form with applications of the theory to copyright, patent, and network neutrality; and (2) Essential Facilities, Infrastructure, and Open [...]

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One argument against network neutrality—in favor of use(r)-specific discrimination by networks—is that neutrality is a misnomer, bias is inevitable, and we should not “artificially” bias the system against latency-sensitive applications like video-on-demand. Now I think this argument and its variants have significant holes. I discussed them elsewhere and have an article coming [...]

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here.

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