Proposed legislation in California (Assembly Bill No. 437) aims to prohibit actors from voluntarily selling something they are willing to sell— contractual exclusivity. In this BULLETIN, we demonstrate that the proposed California legislation will reduce the compensation to actors, either...

Prior to the invention of the Internet, shopping for goods was relatively simple: a consumer visited a brick-and-mortal retailer and selected a product from what was available or, for some retailers, shopped using a catalog. Today, a simple Internet search may return a bewildering number of...

When a terrestrial radio station plays a song during its over-the-air broadcast, the artists and their record labels receive no compensation for the sound recording right. Yet radio's digital competitors — including streaming services and satellite radio — do pay performance royalties to...

Last fall, the Federal Communications Commission issued an Order on Reconsideration and Eighth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to establish a clear set of rules for public safety spectrum located in the 4.9 GHz band. Among other reforms, the Notice proposes to centralize non-public safety...

For the last twenty years, promoting broadband adoption has been a focal point of communications policy around the world. Despite significant advances, there is still much work to be done. To help bridge this adoption gap, in many countries private communications companies are now offering...

We attempt to shed some light on the optimal design of Commission rules and practices for addressing interference disputes. Since spectrum licenses produce no benefits without large and mostly sunk investments in communications networks, our focus is on investment incentives. We argue that the...

According to the music recording industry, YouTube, one of the largest purveyors of on-demand digital music, evades paying market rates for the use of copyrighted content by exploiting the Digital Millennium Copyright Act's “safe harbor” provisions. The source of the distortion in licensing...

For decades, economists have encouraged regulators to implement more efficient telephone pricing policies in order to eliminate the pervasive cross-subsidies from usage-based services to basic connections. Slowly, and reluctantly, regulators have moved in this direction. The most recent...

Over the past few months there have been calls to impose "wireless net neutrality" rules on the burgeoning United States wireless industry. These critics assert that certain practices by the wireless industry - such as handset "locking" practices, data bandwidth limitations, and control over...

In POLICY BULLETIN NO. 54, I compared fixed broadband speeds across thousands of U.S. and foreign cities. My analysis revealed that average download speeds for fixed broadband are typically faster in the United States and often materially so, and U.S. upload speeds are comparable to other...