TechBytes

Last week the FCC released a report showing that 91 percent of US residents are pleased with their broadband connection speed, even if they do not know exactly what that speed is.

Piracy and Counterfeiting are back in the news again.

Even casual observers of the FCC should have noticed by now that the policy actions it has taken in the last year, and the comments made by some of the commissioners, make clear that at least a couple extreme so-called “consumer groups” that routinely visit with FCC staff are leading commissioners in radical policy directions.

Recently the FCC decided it should examine the current “retransmission consent rules” to determine whether they are working for all parties, including broadcasters, content creators, service providers and customers.

A few years ago there was a popular book entitled All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.

The National Broadband Plan debate has given rise to claims that the FCC intends to go beyond its traditional regulatory mandate and begin to aggressively refashion the Internet in such a way as to achieve particular social ends.

Whether it is “little punk staffers,” or talk radio chatter, or the various Tea Party groups, suddenly a chorus of our elected representatives on Capitol Hill is calling such comments or speakers “dangerous” or “scary.

It’s widely understood that the world has moved into a knowledge economy, and that economic growth and individual empowerment today are driven more by breakthroughs in science, technology and creativity than by just supplying child labor or by working longer and harder.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) this week issued a “Report to Congressional Committees: INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, Observations on Efforts to Quantify the Economic Effects of Counterfeit and Pirated Goods.

As we reported last February, a group of so-called consumer advocates and labor interests was urging Comcast to drop the litigation it brought challenging the FCC's use and enforcement of agency-made "guidelines.