In the nearly fifteen years that I've known Adam Thierer, the opportunity to get him going on one of his favorite soapboxes has been fairly regular. Lucky for me, they are usually quite interesting and always provocative.

This morning Greg Mankiw posts on one of Adam's favorite topics: attribution error. In particular, Mankiw highlights the intersection of behavioral psychology and economics. People tend to overestimate the importance of personal characteristics and underestimate the importance of the situation when evaluating others. When we evaluate ourselves, the reverse is true. We overestimate the importance of our own personal characteristics and underestimate the importance of circumstances. The idea shows up in the literature on management, particularly in human resources and leadership studies.

Want more? Would you like to see it applied to media regulation and censorship? Try chapter 5 of Adam's latest book, Media Myths (pp. 119-123).

Hat tip to Marginal Revolution.

News this week that proponents of network neutrality regulation are redoubling their efforts in the Senate reminds us that this legislative battle is far from over [TRDaily subscription required]. Also ongoing is the insistence -- in (virtually) all neutrality proposals -- that regulators pretend consumers will never have a choice of providers using technology other than cable modems and DSL. Sadly, if those favoring this regulation of the broadband Internet emerge victorious, make believe may become real, as I discuss in a recent op-ed.

There's an interesting story on B1 of today's Wall Street Journal about cellular companies establishing very restrictive standards for wireless media content transmitted over their devices. I have yet to see the final guidelines that the Journal gained access to, but it sounds like Verizon, Cingular, Sprint and others will be imposing some very stringent controls in an attempt to curtail nudity and sexual content, foul language, violent programming and even hate speech.

As I pointed out in my recent PFF study, "Parents Have Many Tools to Combat Objectionable Media Content," this is just another example of the sort of steps that media providers and distributors are taking to help parents and consumers restrict or curtail objectionable content before they call upon government to do that job for them. Of course, one could argue that the only reason they are taking such steps is to avoid potential government scrutiny in the future. (Then again, the FCC does not currently possess the legal authority to regulate "indecent" or "violent" content on cellular / mobile networks or devices.) Regardless, I think it's great that companies are establishing some voluntary guidelines and controls.

One thing that is still a bit unclear to me, however, is exactly how cellular carriers plan to police all the media content that will increasingly be flowing over their networks. The Journal article says that carriers are currently relying mostly on ad-hoc phone calls or e-mails to specific media providers to remove or edit certain types of potentially objectionable content. But even if the cellular carriers allocate more resources to such ad-hoc enforcement efforts, it certainly won't be fool-proof. It will be easier to police content provided by large players (such as MTV or Playboy, for example), but what about all the organic, bottom-up, user-generated content?

This is the problem News Corp. has been facing in recent months with MySpace.com. Millions of average people (mostly teenagers) are posting countless bits of personal material on their sites. Some of it can get a little raunchy or offensive. That's created a significant challenge for MySpace, but they are trying to do their best to keep up with it.

Cellular carriers will face that same challenge in coming years as more and more media goes mobile. It will be interesting to see how they deal with it and what the response of the legislative / regulatory community will be to these self-regulatory efforts. Stay tuned; another major First Amendment battle could be developing over that tiny TV screen in your pocket !

Just heard at the House Energy and Commerce Committee mark-up of the COPE Act:

Rep. Eshoo just said that we've all been using the Internet for free, and if net neutrality langauge isn't passed in this bill, we will be charged for it.

Really? Well, I guess I'll cancel my Comcast subscription! Why didn't someone tell me I didn't have to pay for Internet access?

As Adam points out, if the Internet needs saving from anything it's from more regulation. Thus I'd like to point readers in the direction of another coalition I recently learned of, Hands Off the Internet:

Hands Off The Internet is a nationwide coalition of Internet users united together in the belief that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation. We believe consumers across America see the results of this "hands off" approach - through such benefits as expanded distance education opportunities, improved access and speed to almost any information, on-line commerce, and an easier and inexpensive way to communicate with family and colleagues.

I couldn't agree more. And the group further confirms my longstanding contention that tech policy and Internet deregulation shouldn't be partisan -- its co-chairman is former Clinton and DNC spokesman Mike McCurry.

What, if anything, should be inferred from the United States' 12th place ranking in the new OECD broadband statistics released earlier this month? There are some who suggest that our failure to move up in the rankings indicates that the U.S. needs some sort of industrial policy to stimulate broadband deployment.

There is nothing like an oil price spike to bring economic populism to the fore. And it seems to be affecting everyone, even if they should know better.

Here is what I don't understand. If I am an oil company with all this supposed power to manipulate prices and gouge consumers, why would I wait to engage in my most egregious gouging when supplies are tight and hence prices are higher? After all, this is when I am most likely to incur consumer outrage and governmental regulatory interest. Instead, armed with all this power over the price of oil, it would seem much smarter to earn my monopoly profits when prices are lower and no one will notice.

To assume that the oil companies have all this power over oil prices, you also have to assume they are incredibly stupid and self-defeating as to when they exploit this power.

A new pro-Net neutrality coalition has formed called the "Save the Internet Coalition."

Hey, who can be against that? Well, I can.

You see, this coalition's idea of "saving the Internet" is premised on regulators doing the saving. The coalition proclaims that "Congress must include meaningful and enforceable network neutrality requirements" in whatever communications reform legislation it passes this session "to ensure that the Internet remains open to innovation and progress."

Oh, I get it... Let's call in our benevolent-minded regulators to oversee the daily workings of something as complicated as Internet network management. Brilliant !!

Haven't we learned anything from seven decades of communications regulation? Empowering bureaucrats to micro-manage the operation of broadband networks and Internet activities isn't going to lead to communications nirvana; it's going to lead to just another regulatory hell. Supporters of Net neutrality mandates are essentially saying we need more government regulation in order to be free. It's the beginning of another sad chapter in the "burn the village in order to save it" story of modern communications regulation.

And in what I regard as an absolutely despicable contortion of the true meaning of the First Amendment, the Coalition's "statement of principles" on its website states that: "Network neutrality is the Internet's First Amendment. Without it, the Internet is at risk of losing the openness and accessibility that has revolutionized democratic participation, economic innovation and free speech."

Please! How dare you employ the First Amendment in defense of your Big Government plan for Internet control. In case the members of the "Strangle the Internet"... er, uh... "Save the Internet Coalition" have forgotten, the First Amendment could not be any more clear about the role it envisions for government when it says: "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW..."!

We used to talk about "Hands Off the Internet." But groups like this are leading us down the path to "Hands ALL OVER the Internet." To use the First Amendment in service of this regulatory agenda is outrageous.

If the folks in this coalition want to take a stand in favor of the REAL First Amendment, perhaps they can come join me in my daily fight against the FCC on the speech control front. Those same benevolent bureaucrats that the "Save the Internet" coalition wants to empower to regulate Net have been very busy lately regulating speech in the broadcast sector.

You might say there's no connection between these two issues. Nonsense. We gave the regulators an inch on the broadcast front and they took a mile. Once we empowered them to regulate broadcast infrastructure, the regulation of the speech delivered via broadcast platforms followed. It's an example of what Vanderbilt law professor Christopher Yoo has labeled "architectural censorship." Simply stated, if government can regulate the soapbox, it can regulate the speech delivered from that soapbox as well. Do you really think things will be different once we invite the bureaucrats in to regulate the Internet?

I say if we're going to "save the Internet," let's start by saving it from silly ideas like Net neutrality regulation.

Entering the Best Buy at Potomac Yards, Alexandria, Virginia, 2:30 pm Sunday, a middle-aged man overheard speaking to his wife in a whiny voice: "But if I quit my job I won't be able to carry my BlackBerry any more!"

Well it didn't take long for a young, rebellious punk to turn into a paranoid, condescending parent. I'm already talking to my kids in ways that used to make me resent my own parents. And I'm already beginning to think about how to watch over their every move like a hawk to make sure that they stay out of trouble.

The difference between raising a kid today versus the past, however, is that technology--much to the dismay of independent-minded children--makes this task even easier for parents. In my recent paper discussing how"Parents Have Many Tools to Combat Objectionable Media Content," I mentioned how new cell phones targeted to kids come embedded not only with a variety of parental controls, but also GPS / geo-location technology. This enables parents to monitor the movements of their children wherever they may go.

Even though my kids are still too young to have their own cell phones, I've already begun thinking about how I might use such tracking technologies in the future. Even though both of my kids are under five years of age, I sometimes sit around thinking about what they are doing or exactly where they are at. This is despite the fact that I know exactly where my kids are: My daughter is always at her pre-school and my son is always at home with our nanny. Yet, I'm still paranoid, and sometimes find myself wondering if they are exactly where they should be. Could they have wondered off? Are the teachers or my nanny taking the kids places I don't know about? Has someone snatched them?!?

I know this is all quite pathetic in one sense, but that's the sort of paranoid thinking that sometimes goes on in the heads of parents. And in my most paranoid moments, I sometimes think how cool it would be if I could just convert the wi-fi radar on my laptop (which searches for nearby hotspots and maps them on a big radar screen on my computer) into a kid-tracker instead. It could track their cell phones, or their GPS-enable watches or lunchboxes. Or perhaps even the RFID chip I could plant under their skin!

Again, this is the sort of stuff that what have driven me into to hyper-rebellion as a kid, especially as a teenager. The thought of my parents tracking my every move would have driven me nuts, and I my computer-nerd brother and I probably would have worked hard to defeat or trick any geo-location technologies that our parents might have tired to use with us. (My brother would have probably reprogrammed them to trace our cats instead of us.)

Is there a happy balance here? I think so.