There are all sorts of year-end / best-of / Top 10 lists being put together right now, but I haven't seen anyone offer up a "Most Important Tech Policy Developments of 2006" list. Geez, isn't everyone else on the planet as interested in this nerdy stuff as we are?!

Anyway, I'd don't have a top ten list, but I do have a nomination for the story that I think belongs on the top of such a list. I think the biggest tech policy story of 2006 was the heated political battle over Net Neutrality regulation and the fact that Congress did NOT pass legislation mandating it. It was a hell of a battle, pitting titans of industry against each other. And in intellectual circles it had policy wonks foaming at the mouth. (You can find all our rumblings on the topic here and here).

I don't think this debate is over, but I'm not sure it will ever be as heated of an affair as it was this year. I also doubt that Net Neutrality mandates have nearly as good of a chance of passing through Congress this coming session since it is less likely there will be a major communications reform bill to attach it to. And there's no way Net Neutrality regulation will pass as a stand-alone measure. There's just too much opposition to it. It would have to be passed as part of some grand communications law reform compromise measure.

Anyway, I'd be interested in hearing what others think was the biggest tech policy story of 2006, or at least belongs on the Top 10 list.

In a few of my previous essays, I've been wondering about the future of virtual reality worlds and specifically how property rights might get defined within those worlds. Alan Sipress of the Washington Post penned an excellent story yesterday on this subject which I thought I'd bring to your attention. In his lengthy front-page story, "Where Real Money Meets Virtual Reality, The Jury Is Still Out," Sipress notes that:

"As virtual worlds proliferate across the Web, software designers and lawyers are straining to define property rights in this emerging digital realm. The debate over these rights extends far beyond the early computer games that pioneered virtual reality into the new frontiers of commerce. ... U.S. courts have heard several cases involving virtual-world property rights but have yet to set a clear precedent clarifying whether people own the electronic goods they make, buy or accumulate in Second Life and other online landscapes. ...

The debate is assuming greater urgency as commerce gains pace in virtual reality. In Second Life, where nearly 2 million people have signed up to create their own characters and socialize with other digital beings, the virtual economy is booming, with total transactions in November reaching the equivalent of $20 million. Second Life's creator, Linden Lab, allows members to exchange the electronic currency they accumulate online with real U.S. dollars. Last month, people converted about $3 million at the Lindex currency market."

The FCC's endemic dysfunctionality and lawlessness is on full display with the AT&T/BellSouth merger. The daily soap opera reached an interim crescendo last week with Commissioner McDowell's decision to recuse himself from the proceeding. Given we are now at the two minute warning, or halftime, or early in the first quarter of the proceeding, here is some color commentary.
It is premature to ask, "Who lost T/BLS?," as the proceeding will undoubtedly end up in approval, just with a much higher shakedown price. Instead, let's ask: "who is to blame for this circus?"
There is plenty of blame to go around, in order:
1. The Law FCC Commissioner Furchtgott-Roth many times bore witness to the dubious and lawless FCC merger review process. Quite rightly, Furchtgott-Roth questioned the capriciousness of merger reviews that were generally pro forma, but opportunisitically turned into shakedowns with wish lists of non-germane goodies added. The T/BLS merger has turned into the ultimate shakedown at this point, and the capacious legal standard (and non-reviewability) makes it possible.

The FCC got a wake-up call yesterday in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City. The agency was there in court defending its recent actions in various indecency enforcement cases against Fox Television. Specifically, the question at hand was whether of not the use of a fleeting explicative should be categorically barred from the airwaves and punishable by massive fines if they are uttered. (You can find the video of the trial on C-Span's website).

The 3-judge panel showed very little patience with the FCC and asked some sharp questions about its stepped-up crusade to regulate broadcast speech. (The case is Fox Television v. FCC and, as I mentioned here before, I filed a joint amicus brief in the case along with my friends at the Center for Democracy and Technology.)

Before a packed courtroom, FCC attorney Eric Miller was grilled by Second Circuit Judges Rosemary Pooler, Pierre Leval and Peter Hall on numerous issues. Here are a few highlights:

This new poll from the folks over at 463 Communications and Zogby reveals that an overwhelming majority of Americans (83 percent, to be exact) "believe that a typical 12-year-old knows more about the Internet than their member of Congress." And there is no difference by party affliation. Republicans (85 percent) and Democrats (86 percent) agreed completely on this point.

How sad, and some days in this town I'm inclined to agree.

IPCentral.Info has a quiz for net neutrality proponents.

Can U.S. companies do business in China?

It's a question that will have to be answered with time, but today offered two signs of difficulty in the near-term. The big news would have to be eBay reportedly abandoning its own auction site in China, instead stepping aside to be a minority partner with a Chinese company, Tom Online. This contradicts CEO Meg Whitman's commitment to the Chinese market just two months ago. We were also reminded today of the high rate of piracy in China, but we also had good news as a Chinese court ruled in favor of five U.S. movie studios against a Chinese DVD store.

China often gives us mixed messages. It has home-grown companies looking to compete, but the question always remains as to what extent the government is putting its thumb on that scale. It has a general disdain for the IP of outsiders, but in needing to protect its own growing IP base finds itself needing to put teeth in its IP laws.

IPCentral.Info opines about these topics in "Tales of Invention: The Transistor."

To follow on Solveig's blog, it is important to emphasize that Steve Titch's study of Provo, Utah's municipal broadband system - iProvo - is just the latest in a series of studies (including some of our own) that have reached essentially the same result. Namely, these systems are not in the interests of the taxpayers who are their involuntary shareholders. As is typical of these systems, iProvo is in competition with private providers - in this case, Comcast and Qwest - notwithstanding the claim that government needs to step in because the private sector isn't doing it. This competition makes it virtually impossible for the municipal systems to achieve the combination of penetration and price necessary to cover costs, as the experience of iProvo and virtually all similar experiments shows. The result is some combination of higher taxes and higher electricity rates (iProvo is being cross-subsidized by the municipal utility), for no real benefit. The Reason study indicates that most of iProvo's 5,000 customers had broadband before and that the rates being charged are not substantially lower than those being offered by the incumbent cable and telephone companies. Hopefully, the growing accumulation of evidence will dissuade other municipalities from going down this path.

I spend a lot of time arguing with media critics who would like to see various types of content censored in the name of protecting children. Video games are usually at the top of their regulatory wish list. Some of these critics claim that video games are, at a minimum, creating a generation of slothful youth. But others make more grandiose claims that video games are training today's youth to essentially be cop killers or serial murderers. That's the conclusion of one book I read recently with the title (I'm not kidding) "Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill." The authors of this over-the-top book argue that there is "a clear cause-and-effect relationship between screen violence and violent behavior."

But it just isn't true. As I documented in this recent study, juvenile murder, rape, robbery and assault are all down significantly over the past decade. Overall, aggregate violent crime by juveniles fell 43 percent from 1995-2004. And there are fewer murders at school today and fewer students report carrying weapons to school or anywhere else than at any point in the past decade. Other juvenile trends are improving, too. Alcohol and drug abuse among high school seniors has generally been falling and is currently at a 20-year low. Teen birth rates have hit a 20-year low in 2002 and fewer teens are having sex today than they were 15 years ago. High school dropout rates continue to fall steadily, as they have for the past 30 years. And although the teenage suicide rate rose steadily until the mid-1990s, it began a dramatic decline after that that continues today. (All these statistics are thoroughly documented in my study).

But let's set aside these meddlesome things called facts for a moment and ask a different question: Are the "games" that kids play today really more dangerous than the games older generations played when they were children? Are the electronically-rendered games that kids play today really more dangerous than the games children played back in the "good ol' days"?

What got me thinking about this website that one of my PFF colleagues brought to my attention entitled "The 10 Most Dangerous Play Things of All Time." It's a humorous look at some of the most dangerous toys and games of the past few decades. And when I say dangerous, I mean seriously dangerous toys -- as in death, dismemberment or poisoning. That kind of dangerous. And I'm proud to say that even though I owned and played with 3 of the toys on the "most dangerous" list, I made it out of childhood alive and unharmed! Nonetheless, the list is frightening.