internet laws

Indeed, this law is one of the most conspicuous examples of how a legislative body has set different rules for physical space and cyberspace. In this case, the law provides websites and other intermediaries a near-absolute immunization from liability for their users’ content—even if offline publishers would be liable for publishing the exact same user content in dead trees.

It’s hard to overstate the importance of this law to the Internet’s evolution. Without this law, all Internet content probably would be subject to a notice-and-takedown regime like we have for copyright law (see discussion about the DMCA Online Safe Harbors below). If websites had to remove user content upon notice to avoid liability, they would act conservatively, quickly pulling down complained-about content without much fuss. So, any company unhappy with negative consumer comments could simply contact the web host, claim that the comments were defamatory (making the web host potentially liable for the content), and expect the web host to scramble to take down the user’s comment.

47 USC 230 eliminates the notice-and-takedown option for people and companies trying to escape accountability. As a result, 47 USC 230 is a big part of the reason why the Internet became such a massive success.”

Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber

I think you are missing a very key point, here. It's true that telcos were paid government funds to build a significant part of the telephone network. But it's also true that in the vast majority of cases, those parts are the UNPROFITABLE parts.

Let's say you have a water pumping service, doing business in town, and you're making whatever profits you are making. For this example, we'll ignore the fact that most communities have community water. Business is good, you're expanding to cover more and more houses, starting with the most profitable ones first. (densest neighborhoods)

But then de gubbmint comes in and tell you that you have to do a bunch of stuff in order to continue to do business, because of the benefits to the general health of the community or whatever. For example, since you provide water to some houses in your town, now you have to provide water to ALL houses in your town.

Now, it's not as though you wouldn't love to serve all the houses in the town, but some of those houses are over a mile apart! Just the cost to dig the pipes out that far will cost you over $10,000 per house! Since you are charging $50/month for water service, it's going to take almost 20 YEARS before you even break even on the base cost, nevermind the finance charges you'd incur to borrow the money to deliver the service the gubbmint requires!

And you can't charge the homeowners, either - they aren't buying anything, they didn't ask for it, and making them pay would be onerous on them, too.

So, in circumstances like these, it's very typical for the private company (your water company) to ask for funding to assist in the problem areas. It often comes as a sort of deal: Your water company enjoys a monopoly status, subject to various regulations that you have to perform, in exchange for funding to cover the plumbing for the unprofitable areas.

So the net effect goes something like this:

1) Your company is now a monopoly that must turn in a Profits and Loss statement, along with proof of regular water testing to the city council every month or so. You cover 100% of the houses in the community, and you have no effective competition. One of your concessions is that the municipality can levy taxes via your bills. You have to calculate this bill, and turn over the tax money to the city quarterly.

2) The city has now satisfied its goal of everybody having 100% availability to clean drinking water. It's paid for costs of plumbing by taking out a bond, secured against a tax raised against people's water bill.

3) Everybody who lives in the community now pays a 5% monthly tax on the water bill to cover the cost of plumbing outlying areas. Financially, it's a raise in your bill if you were already contracted with the water company when it was all private, it still brings benefits such as improved local economy resulting from the improved infrastructure.

Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber

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Ease norms for internet calls, Trai tells govt

Prices of domestic long-distance calls are expected to halve to around 50 paise a minute and those for international calls fall by a fifth if the recommendations of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) to permit internet service providers (ISPs) to offer unrestricted internet telephony are cleared by the government.

Allowing ISPs to extend their internet telephony operations will effectively create an alternative domestic telephone network and has been criticised by mobile service providers as being unfair.

Two years ago, the government permitted telecom licensees to offer unrestricted internet telephony as part of their licence conditions. None of the mobile operators has done so yet, principally because the service would drive down prices and impact average revenue per user, which is already among the lowest in the world.

ISPs are currently allowed to offer Net calls but subject to certain restrictions such as between two personal computers, one in India and the other anywhere in the world; between a subscriber with a voice over internet protocol (VOIP) phone in India and a subscriber with a similar device in any country; and also between a PC in India and a fixed or mobile number in another country.

If the new policy is accepted, consumers will be able to call through the Net directly to fixed line and mobile numbers across the country and vice-versa. They can do so either through the PC or through a VOIP phone or from a landline fitted with an additional device.

Ease norms for internet calls, Trai tells govt

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Govt - Worst Enemy of Small Business

Over-Criminalization of Small Business Laws

Small businesses are required to comply with more than 75,000 pages of federal regulations, and more than 27,000 of these pages of regulations carry criminal penalties. Unfortunately, an increasing number of well-meaning, unsuspecting small-business owners are being convicted and serving jail time for regulatory crimes and small business laws they did not even know existed. In addition to facing criminal prosecution for not complying with U.S. regulations, small-business owners can face criminal prosecution for violating foreign regulations of which they might not have been aware. The NFIB Small Business Legal Center is fighting the trend to over-criminalize regulatory violations.

State of the Union: Small Business, Large Regulation

Regulation imposes a huge burden on consumers and the economy. While precisely calculating regulatory costs is difficult, a recent study performed by economists Thomas Hopkins and Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration estimated that regulations cost Americans $843 billion in 2000, or some $8,000 per household – close to what Americans pay in income taxes.

The same report found that small businesses, historically the most effective creators of new jobs, bear a disproportionate share of this cost. Hopkins and Crain estimate, for instance, that firms employing 20 people or less face regulatory costs of almost $7,000 per employee, compared to about $4,500 for the largest firms.

Wayne Crews of the Competitive Enterprise Institute

Crews is working on this year's edition of CEI's "10,000 Commandments," an assessment of the regulatory state. He notes that the Small Business Administration estimates the cost of federal regulations to U.S. businesses - an indirect tax - at about $1 trillion a year, more than a third of the direct cost, at $2.7 trillion, of the federal budget. The Federal Register, the official record of new regulations, weighs in at 75,000 pages a year of new rules and mandates that Congress doesn't review.

Streamlining (and eliminating) regulations would do much more for U.S. competitiveness across the board than subsidizing the production of scientists and mathematicians and tinkering with the tax code. It wouldn't hurt to make it easier to hire people rather than more complicated. Then we can look at reducing taxes across the board.

Innovation comes less from official guidance than from unexpected breakthroughs and applications by mavericks and established companies alike. The best way to facilitate it is through freedom rather than central planning.

States and Small Business Health Insurance: An Overview

Small businesses are driven crazy by soaring employee health costs, an expense that surveys show has become the biggest headache and obstacle to growth. Now, a growing army of consultants and benefits experts are promoting new health plans and services aimed at owners desperate to rein in costs.

The Double Trouble of Taxation

The burden of complying with the income tax is tremendous. Since its inception in 1913, the tax code has gone from 400 pages to over 67,000. The Tax Foundation estimates that around $265 billion dollars and 6 billion hours are spent just on compliance. That expense amounts to about 22 cents of every dollar the IRS collects. Imagine the boon to the economy if we spent that time and money expanding our businesses and creating jobs!

Aside from the direct loss of money and productivity, the funds from the income tax enable the government to do some very destructive things, such as vastly over-regulating economic activity, making it difficult to earn money in the first place. The federal government funds over 50 agencies, departments and commissions that formulate rules and regulations. These bureaucracies operate with little to no oversight from the people or Congress and generate around 4,000 new rules every year and operate at a cost of about 40 billion dollars. There are some 75,000 pages of regulations in the Federal Register that Americans are expected to know and abide by. Complying with these governmental regulations costs American businesses more than one trillion dollars per year, according to a study by Mark Crain for the Small Business Administration. This complicated system drives production to other countries and shrinks our job market here at home.

The Future of Ideas is now Free

After a productive and valuable conversation with my publisher, Random House, they've agreed to permit The Future of Ideas to be licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. You can download the book for free here, or above.

This means all four of my books are now CC licensed. Code (v1) was licensed under a BY-SA license; so too, Code (v2). And Free Culture and now The Future of Ideas are licensed under BY-NC licenses.

I am particularly glad that The Future of Ideas is now freely licensed. That book hit the stores 2 weeks after September 11. I'm glad it now has a chance to flow a bit more freely.