Month: June 2016

By Geoff Huston and Tim Denton. Geoff Huston is the chief scientist of APNIC and the creator of potaroo.net The astonishing rise and rise of the fortunes of Google has been one of the major features of both social and business life of the early 21st century. In the same way that Microsoft transformed the computer market into a […]

The news that Commissioner Shoan was fired by the Governor in Council for cause shocks me. As Talleyrand said to Napoleon about some judicial murder that the latter had engaged in: “worse than a crime, sire, it was a mistake”. Firing Raj Shoan is no crime, but it may prove an extremely expensive mistake. Shoan has fought […]

The CRTC’s decision to support local television news is at once sensible and right from the logic of the Broadcasting Act, and slightly mad from any perspective not governed by that statute. It is right in that it allows broadcasters to shift subsidies from something truly obsolete (community television) to something which might have a few […]

The US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld the FCC rules on net neutrality today. They did so on the basis that they are common carriers, and do not have speech rights such that the net neutrality would interfere with. The Wall Street Journal reported that: In the core decision, the […]

I used to think it was somewhat cynical to observe that, when your business model is failing, you legislate against its  rivals. Quebec has proven this point to be precisely accurate. The papers have noticed that Quebec’s website blocking legislation has passed into law. Quebec has achieved the trifecta of a law that is patently […]