Communications Law Commons^™

An End To End-To-End? A Review Essay Of Barbara Van Schewick’S Internet Architecture And Innovation, Adam Candeub

Federal Communications Law Journal

Amidst much controversy, the FCC released its landmark "network neutrality" order in December 2010. This regulation prohibits Internet service providers, such as Verizon or Comcast, from discriminating in favor of traffic or content that they own or with which they are affiliated. Professor Barbara van Schewick's recently published book, Internet Architecture and Innovation, could not be timelier. Employing a variety of economic and technical arguments, van Schewick defends the type of regulation the FCC passed as necessary to preserve the Internet's potential for innovation. My central critique of Internet Architecture is its deployment of economic theories on one side of …

International Media Law Reform And First Amendment Agnosticism: Review Of Lee Bollinger’S Uninhibited, Robust, And Wide-Open: A Free Press For A New Century, Enrique Armijo

Federal Communications Law Journal

Lee Bollinger's Uninhibited, Robust, and Wide-Open argues that in an increasingly globalized world, the United States must seek to export First Amendment free press principles to other countries. His project, however, is belied by the fact that media law is a product of context and history as much as legalism. His proposals for reconceptualizing our own animating vision for a free press here in the States are also in many important respects inconsistent with the First Amendment itself.

The Politics Of Competition: Review Of Clifford Winston's Government Failure Versus Market Failure: Microeconomics Policy Research And Government Performance And Mark K. Landy, Martin A. Levin & Martin Shapiro, Eds., Creating Competitive Markets: The Politics Of Regulatory Reform, Russell P. Hanser

Federal Communications Law Journal

Two recent books focus attention on the role of regulation in the modem economy and the reasons why efforts at deregulation succeed or fail. Clifford Winston's Government Failure Versus Market Failure: Microeconomics Policy Research and Government Performance reviews empirical studies of regulation and its alternatives, arguing that economic regulation has quite often done more harm than good. In Creating Competitive Markets: The Politics of Regulatory Reform, editors Mark K. Landy, Martin A. Levin and Martin Shapiro collect essays addressing the political dangers faced by those pursuing market liberalization, both before and (especially) after reform is enacted. Read together, these books …

Carl Ramey's Mass Media Unleashed, Henry Geller

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Carl R. Ramey, Mass Media Unleashed: How Washington Policy Makers Shortchanged the American Public (2007).

This superb book treats an important issue: the proper regulatory policy for broadcasting in the twenty-first century. In it, Carl Ramey critiques the Federal Communications Commission's public trustee and deregulatory market policies and suggests that to meet the dynamic market and technological changes of this new century we should, among other things, free commercial broadcasters completely from public trustee requirements and eliminate FCC enforcement of its ownership and related rules. Based on the long experience of a communications lawyer who knows so well …

Summing Up The Public Interest: A Review Of "Media Diversity And Localism: Meaning And Metrics," Edited By Philip M. Napoli, Victoria F. Phillips

Federal Communications Law Journal

Philip Napoli's Media Diversity and Localism: Meaning and Metrics, is a thoughtful and first of its kind compilation of some of the ongoing research and scholarship examining the concepts of diversity and localism underlying the Federal Communications Commission's public interest standard in broadcasting. The collection of essays addresses these fundamental goals from a variety of disciplines beyond the law, including political science, communications policy, sociology, and economics. The essays explore the values associated with these two goals, apply performance metrics to assess existing regulatory policies intended to preserve and promote these goals, and reflect on their meaning in the new …

Analyzing The World Bank's Blueprint For Promoting "Information And Communications", Sherille Ismail

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Information and Communications for Development 2006: Global Trends and Policies, issued by the World Bank.

This Review provides a summary and brief analysis of foreign private investment, the book's blueprint for reform, and how investments have fared in promoting economic growth and reducing poverty. The book is a valuable asset for governments, scholars, investors, and the international community seeking to serve end users in developing countries.

A Practitioner's View Of Broadcaster Power, Andrew J. Siegel

Federal Communications Law Journal

A Review of J. H. Snider's Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick: How Local TV Broadcasters Exert Political Power, iUniverse, Inc. 2005. Assistant General Counsel for CBS Andrew J. Siegel reviews this critique of the spectrum award given to television stations as part of The Telecommunications Act of 1996. Using a principal-agent theory, this book examines the complicated relationship between politicians, local television broadcasters, and the U.S. public in an attempt to explain why television broadcasters received the additional spectrum.

The Continuing Role Of State Policy, Jeffrey A. Hart

Federal Communications Law Journal

A review of Hernan Galperin's New Television, Old Politics: The Transition to Digital TV in the United States and Britain, Cambridge University Press, 2004. Based on comparative case studies in Britain and the United States, this book analyzes the transition to digital television in both countries, considers governmental regulatory strategies, and focuses on the impact of various factors, including political influence and market and technological changes.

Digital Crossroads, Kathleen Wallman

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, Jonathan E. Nuechterlein & Philip J. Weiser, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2005, 670 pages.

A review of Digital Crossroads: American Telecommunications Policy in the Internet Age, by Jonathan E. Nuechterlein and Philip J. Weiser, MIT Press, 2005. Most practitioners of communications law are familiar with the necessity of teaching themselves enough economics, engineering, and politics to practice competently and comfortably in an area that is inherently interdisciplinary. Likewise, many professors who teach telecommunications from a variety of disciplinary perspectives are familiar with the frustration of locating a text that …

Looking Beyond The Digital Divide, Yolanda D. Edwards

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society, Anthony G. Wilhelm, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2004, 184 pages.

A review of Anthony G. Wilhelm's Digital Nation: Toward an Inclusive Information Society, MIT Press, 2004. An important attempt to frame the debate about the importance of technological literacy, this book explores world-wide successes and failures to bring technology to the masses and provides a plan to accomplish it in the United States.

Innovation Policy In Telecommunications: Revisiting The Successes Of Guglielmo Marconi, John M. Williamson

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Signor Marconi's Magic Box: The Most Remarkable Invention of the 19th Century & the Amateur Inventor Whose Genius Sparked a Revolution, Gavin Weightman, Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo Press, 2003, 312 pages.

A review of Gavin Weightman's Signor Marconi's Magic Box, Da Capo Press, 2003. An entertaining and informative biography of the inventor of applied wireless communications, this book also gives practical insight into the effect of patent policy on innovation. The Marconi story parallels the challenges faced by today's telecommunications innovators and offers a significant historical perspective relevant to present-day debates over the direction of innovation policy and …

An Introduction To Lessigian Thought, Russ Taylor

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity, Lawrence Lessig, New York: Penguin Press, 2004, 306 pages.

A review of Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig. Lawrence Lessig is a frequent commentator and prolific writer on media and communications topics. His body of work touches copyright issues, radio spectrum policy, media ownership issues, and legal ownership and control of the physical platforms that deliver broadband content. In this 2004 publication, he focuses on copyright policy. …

A Losing Battle For All Sides: The Sad State Of Spectrum Management, Gregory L. Rosston

Federal Communications Law Journal

Spectrum Wars: The Policy and Technology Debate, Jennifer A. Manner, Boston: Artech House, 2003, 186 pages.

A review of Spectrum Wars: The Policy and Technology Debate by Jennifer A. Manner. In this 2003 publication, the author goes a level further than most spectrum analyses do, by attempting to integrate the complex relationship between domestic spectrum policy and international spectrum concerns. Spectrum Wars can be divided into three major parts: a deep background of the institutional detail of the frequency management process, a description of the tensions between different theories on how to change spectrum management, and finally, a view about …

Comparative Analysis Of Telecommunications Regulations: Pitfalls And Opportunities, Mary Newcomer Williams

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Controlling Market Power in Telecommunications: Antitrust vs. Sector-specific Regulation by Damien Geradin and Michel Kerf.

In this 2003 publication, the authors comprehensively review and analyze the telecommunications regulatory structure of five nations that have achieved some success in promoting competition in telecommunications markets. The authors engage in this analysis in order to evaluate the use of telecommunications sector-specific regulation versus more general, economywide antitrust regulation to accomplish specific goals related to promoting competition and efficiency in the provision of telecommunications services. This review describes the authors’ analysis and highlights its strengths and limitations. It also offers a few …

Public Television Law Réduit, Herbert A. Terry

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: The Public Television Legal Survival Guide, 2d ed., Association of Public Television Stations, 2001, 254 pages.

A review of The Public Television Legal Survival Guide, 2nd ed., Association of Public Television Stations, 2001. According to its preface, the book is intended for "station personnel who do not have legal training" but who need to know some of the basics for their daily work and, through footnotes, to assist "in-house station counsel and outside legal consultants." For the most part, this book fulfills that promise. Privately published by the Association of Public Television Stations (APTS) in Washington, D.C. and …

Working The System, Christopher H. Sterling

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: FCC Lobbying: A Handbook of Insider Tips and Practical Advice, Erwin G. Krasnow, David R. Siddall, and Michael D. Berg, Washington: Telecommunications Reports International, 2001, 225 pages.

In Search Of Congressional Intent, William Malone

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: The Communications Act: A Legislative History of the Major Amendments, 1934-1996, Max D. Paglin ed., Pike & Fischer, Inc., 1999, 438 pages.

The Communications Act: A Legislative History of the Major Amendments 1934-1996, a second volume of the important literary legacy of the Golden Jubilee Commission on Telecommunications, has recently appeared beside the well-thumbed copy of its sister volume, A Legislative History of the Communications Act of 1934, in the library of every diligent communications lawyer. In this Review, William Malone discusses both the content and the format of this legislative history, as well as the continuing relevance …

Whither Unregulated Access Competition?, Clayton C. Miller

Federal Communications Law Journal

Book Review: Universal Service: Competition, Interconnection, and Monopoly in the Making of the American Telephone System, by Milton L. Mueller, Jr., MIT Press and AEI Press, 1997, 191 pages.