Rick MacCarthur, owner and publisher of Harper’s has written a long screed on why the Internet is destroying journalism.  Given his left-leaning politics, it is a remarkably establishmentarian argument, comparing the Internet to the evils of the Xerox machine (honest).   MacCarthur was immediately the subject of derision from Gawker and The Altantic, [...]

RoadMAP is not a big fan of self-regulation, which is usually an artifice to avoid meaningful government regulation. But some things aren’t amenable to regulation, particularly when the First Amendment precludes it. Even so, RoadMAP might not have paid much attention to this article had it not come from the New York Times’ David Carr. [...]

This isn’t much of a surprise, but the folks at the Pew Internet and American Life Project have some numbers that demonstrate Americans’ schizophrenic feelings about search engines and privacy.  We say we care, but we behave like we don’t.
Americans Love Google! Americans Hate Google!
This morning, the Pew Internet and American Life Project [...]

There is surely a need for more – much more – spectrum to be made available for wireless broadband.  However, public interest groups have also argued that wireless carriers have failed to use their existing spectrum assets efficiently.  By splitting cells, offloading to wi-fi and other tactics, at least part of [...]

Hayley Tsukayama, Washington Post

The Federal Communications Commission asked Verizon, SpectrumCo — a group comprised of Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House — and Cox to submit more information on their proposed agreement for spectrum, including their commercial deals to cross-sell certain products.
Comcast, Time Warner and Bright House were also asked for information, individually.
The companies [...]

Just the other day, RoadMAP opined that it is dangerous to bet against the cable industry.  Here’s another example.  Netflix, which many have viewed as one of the greatest threats to the future of the cable industry, may be in talks to turn itself into a super cable channel.  Rather than [...]

Last week, the FCC requested public comment on whether it can and should address governmental shut downs of wireless service.  MAP had joined with other public interest groups in asking the FCC to look at the issue after San Francisco’s transit agency did just that a few months ago.  (This is a [...]

The cable industry is used to winning.  It has the best legislative track record, and, to the dismay of the public interest community, the FCC has generally ruled in its favor.  However, TV Everywhere, the cable folks’ strategem to stave off Internet-based competition, is off to a slow start.  RoadMAP finds [...]

RoadMAP regulars know that it believes there’s a lot of life left in the television medium.  RoadMAP saw a very interesting analysis supporting that thesis last week, but copyright limitations precluded sharing it.  Fortunately, AllThingsD produced a synopsis of its key point.
PLUS:
Although RoadMAP is supposed to be limited to one item a [...]

Google’s new privacy policy went into effect yesterday with relatively little opposition.  Sure, there were a lot of news stories about it, but it appears that few of the hundreds of millions of Google users have deserted. The Atlantic has a terrific primer on data tracking that does a great job of [...]