Google and YouTube argue that they are innocent in the copyright infringement lawsuit filed by Viacom because they are protected under the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions. But Safe Harbor only protects websites that have no knowledge of infringement yet YouTube founders clearly knew of and almost entirely depended on pirated content. One YouTube co-founder even uploaded stolen content himself.

Free Press wants the FCC to mandate a dumb Internet because they claim that network prioritization technology makes networks unfair and inefficient. But the engineering shows that prioritized networks are actually more fair and more efficient.

If the FCC interprets the national broadband plan it sent to Congress today as an invitation to impose heavy burdens on the Internet, it will be against the better judgment of Commissioners Robert McDowell and Meredith Attwell Baker. They reminded the commission that the Internet has reshaped American business and society precisely because it has been allowed to thrive without interference from the government.

When government gives away super valuable 700 MHz mobile spectrum, it gets wasted on wireless backhaul which could have used 5 GHz. While 700 MHz might save a little money on backhaul costs, it saves a lot more money on access and mobile networks. Commercial operators that paid billions of dollars for 700 MHz spectrum would never waste valuable spectrum like this.

The FCC today paved the way for Tuesday’s release of a national broadband plan by publicizing the executive summary for the plan. The good news is that aggressive regulatory burdens do not appear to be in the offing; the bad news is that the FCC did not rule out future intervention.

The FCC is set to deliver its national broadband plan to Congress on Wednesday, and YouTube will be interviewing Chairman Julius Genachowski about the plan and other topics a day before its release. Digital Society submitted a question on intellectual property enforcement in the digital economy.

Burlington Vermont’s experiment in municipal fiber was once thought to be shining example of why muni-fiber broadband was such a great idea. Those dreams have now turned into a $50 million nightmare for the tax payers of Burlington Vermont the majority of whom don’t use the service.

Municipal fiber is seen by many as the holy-grail of broadband utopia, but like utopia it hasn’t had much success in the real world. This paper examines the challenges of implementing community owned fiber and why tax payers are getting stuck with a huge debt.

The FCC yesterday announced its plan to create a volunteer “digital literacy corps.” But based on the government’s track record in implementing a similar technology-oriented volunteer plan, the National Emergency Technology Guard, the idea will never meet the FCC’s lofty expectations. Congress authorized NET Guard in 2003, but it took five years just to launch a pilot program.

Conventional wisdom says that more innovation for applications on the Internet must involve much more bandwidth. But once we understand the economics of video on the Internet, we quickly begin to understand why applications will never be high bandwidth.