Tacos or Fajitas?
Plus our sizzling takes on privacy, broadband, content moderation, and more!
Are fajitas better than tacos? No… but in honor of National Fajita Day we’ll spill the beans on the history of this still very delicious alternative. The first concrete evidence of fajitas traces back to the 1930s—when ranch workers would routinely receive tough cuts of meat as partial payment for their work. In an attempt to make the meat more edible, these workers would marinate the meat, grill or cook it over an open fire, and then serve it in tortillas. It would take a few more decades for the dish to become mainstream, when the first commercial fajita concession stand was introduced in 1969. Well, that's a wrap for this week's history lesson, now back to tech policy.
Privacy. Last week, the FTC published an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM)—essentially a Notice of Inquiry but in the FTC's special Mag–Moss rulemaking process—on commercial privacy. The Commission is asking the public to weigh in on whether new rules are needed to protect people’s privacy and information in the so-called commercial surveillance economy. In a Twitter thread, Berin explained that the FTC can't provide the clarity and consistent national protection of privacy that legislation can—so the most critical thing is that Congress keep moving forward on writing legislation. In his dissent from the ANPRM, FTC Commissioner Phillips made many of the same points we did in our FCC comments on digital discrimination.
Broadband. On Tuesday, Jim filed reply comments to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in response to the Commission’s Public Notice requesting comment on the interagency agreement entered into among the FCC, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The agreement among these agencies needs to include the U.S. Department of Treasury; it should recognize the rapidly increasing costs of broadband deployment, including the need to “rip and replace”; it should produce a single map of broadband deployment that can’t be gamed by states and municipalities wishing to spend taxpayer dollars to overbuild existing broadband deployment; and it should remain technology-neutral in all aspects of broadband deployment. Our press release can be found here and shared on Twitter here.
Content Moderation. Content moderation is, as ever, an interesting, contentious, and fast-paced policy area. On this week’s Tech Policy Podcast, Corbin, Andy, and Santana present a late-summer content moderation news roundup. They covered Andy’s recent article on AB 2408, a misguided attempt by California to combat teenage social media addiction. They discussed YouTube’s recent Supreme Court brief in Gonzalez v. Google, a case about whether Section 230 protects algorithmic recommendations (spoiler alert: it does). They also talked about Santana’s essay arguing that algorithms are speech protected by the First Amendment and Corbin’s recent piece in Techdirt, “Two Dogmas of the Free Speech Panic,” a response to those who equate content moderation with “censorship.” Listen to the episode here. You can share the episode on Twitter here.
Litigation. Corbin doesn’t know much about the litigation over Trump’s tax returns (or, for that matter, about tax law!). But he knows a thing or two about appellate procedure. Last week he was quoted in a Bloomberg Tax article about whether the House Ways and Means Committee can get Trump’s returns before January 3—when Democrats might lose control of Congress. The D.C. Circuit has stayed its decision ordering production of the returns pending resolution of a petition for rehearing. “January 3 is toast,” Corbin opined, if the full court agrees to grant the petition.
Space. Jim was quoted in TechNewsWorld with some analysis on the Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node program (Space-BACN)—a project that seeks to create a low-cost, reconfigurable optical communications terminal that adapts to most optical intersatellite link standards, translating among diverse satellite constellations. The satellite industry as a whole is the big winner as things stand now, more so than end-users, given that the power and price for a user terminal are going to preclude broad use of the technologies that emerge from this program. Getting all the players into the same virtual room to work on much-needed standards will allow them to get federal support for their research and leverage the work of other companies.
Universal Service Fund. TechFreedom is cited multiple times in the FCC’s recent Report to Congress on the USF. In the Report, the FCC argues that the USF can be funded almost completely out of a tax on the advertising revenues of edge provider services. Our comments and other work, however, make clear that the FCC can’t just impose a new tax on unregulated entities. Only Congress has the power to tax.
Follow us on Twitter! Berin: @BerinSzoka, Andy: @AndyJungTech, Ari: @AriCohn Bilal: @BilalKSayyed, Corbin: @corbinkbarthold, Jason: @JasonKuznicki, Santana: @santanaboulton
A sizzling plate of deliciousness. But where are the tortillas?