Well, another four months have passed since I last asked this question, but let me pose it again: Where exactly is the FCC's Video Competition Report and why is it taking so long to get it out the door? It wouldn't have anything to do with a certain Chairman Ahab still trying to get his cable whale, would it? No, of course not. I'm sure there's a perfectly rational reason that this 13th Annual report is now something like 18 months past due altogether. Right.

And keep in mind that the data in the 13th report is for a period ending on June 30, 2006, so whenever the report finally comes out the data in it will be well over two years old! That won't exactly reflect the true state of the video programming market considering the significant changes we have since that time, especially the continued explosive growth of online video, VOD, and DVRs.

The reason that I have been making a big deal out of this issue is because this gets to the question of just how "scientific" and "independent" of an agency the FCC really is. We are talking about facts here. Basic data. This is stuff the FCC should be routinely collecting and reporting on a timely basis -- indeed that is what Congress requires the agency to do in this specific case. And yet the agency can't do it because its Chairman is on this Moby Dick-like crusade against the cable industry. By the time this 13th annual report finally sees the light of day, the 15th annual report might be due! Outrageous. (And you wonder why many of us here are so skeptical about empowering the FCC regulating the Internet via Net neutrality mandates! If an over-zealous Chairman can politicize this issue, just think what might happen once we give the agency the authority to regulate the Net.)

Anyway, down below you will find the paper that Barbara Esbin and I wrote about the issue four months ago. Perhaps we should place a little ticker somewhere here on the site that counts each day that passes as we wait for the Commission to produce this report. We can take bets on when the agency's data holdout will end.

Over at Ars, Ben Kuchera has a review of Ask.com's redesign of its web portal for kids, AskKids.com. It's a great new addition to the growing list of safe seach tools and web portals geared toward younger surfers.

I'm also a big fan of KidZui, the new browser for kids that provides access to over 800,000 kid-friendly websites, videos, and pictures that have been pre-screened by over 200 trained teachers and parents. The company employs a rigorous 5-step "content selection process" to determine if it is acceptable for kids between 3-12 years of age. My kids, both under the age of 7, just love it, but I can't see many kids older than 10 enjoying it because it is mostly geared toward the youngest web surfers.

Last year, as part of my 10-part series coinciding with "Internet Safety Month," I wrote about the market for safe search tools and web portals for kids. I generally divide these sites and services into two groups:

(1) "Safe Search" Tools and Portals for Kids
(2) Child- and Teen-Oriented Websites

Below I will describe each group and list the many sites and services currently available. I encourage readers to offer additional suggestions for sites that belong on the list. (I keep a running list of these sites and services in my book, "Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods.")

... environmental attorney Dusty Horwitt, who recently published this outlandishly stupid and highly offensive editorial in the Washington Post calling for an information tax to reduce the supply of information in society. "[I]n our information-overloaded society," he argues, "the concept of [too much information] is no joke. The information avalanche coming from all sides -- the Internet, PDAs, hundreds of television channels -- is burying us in extraneous data that prevent important facts and knowledge from reaching a broad audience." His repressive solution?

It's possible that over time, an energy tax, by making some computers, Web sites, blogs and perhaps cable TV channels too costly to maintain, could reduce the supply of information. If Americans are finally giving up SUVs because of high oil prices, might we not eventually do the same with some information technologies that only seem to fragment our society, not unite it? A reduced supply of information technology might at least gradually cause us to gravitate toward community-centered media such as local newspapers instead of the hyper-individualistic outlets we have now.

Mike Masnick of TechDirt and Richard Kaplar of the Media Institute do a fine job of ripping Mr. Horwitt's absurd proposal to shreds. As Kaplar argues, it is "sheer lunacy" to "tax the technologies of freedom." Unlike gasoline, there are no good reasons -- not one -- for government to ever take steps to reduce the supply of information. Mr. Horwitt is calling for public officials to use their taxing powers to destroy or limit opportunities for human communications and the free exchange of speech and expression. It is completely antithetical to a free society.

Moreover, if Mr. Horwitt really thinks there is too much information in this world, then perhaps he should lead by example and take his own site offline first! The rest of us will take a world of information abundance over a world of information scarcity any day of the week.

Having covered free speech and media policy issues for many years now, one of the arguments I hear a lot is that we moderns have an unnatural fascination with murder, mayhem, and violence as well as gossip and celebrities. Social critics and proponents of media content regulation often wax nostalgic about the supposed "good ol' days" when all we thought and talked about was enlightened and enriching topics.

It's all complete nonsense. Anyone who has seriously studied our nation's history -- or, for that matter, the history of any country or civilization -- knows that we humans have always been fascinated by the morbid and tales of debauchery, especially when those tales involve public officials or celebrities.

I was reminded of this again today when reading two articles in the Washington Post.

That is often the message we send the world's most productive and creative people who want to live and work in the U.S.

Check out this new flowchart from the Reason Foundation showing how difficult it is to immigrate to the U.S. -- legally.

As you'll see, the best-case if-you're-lucky scenario is six years. More likely 10-20 years. Often, impossible.

This is not the way to remain a dynamic and innovative nation.

How much platform competition is too much competition? For example, what is the optimal number of mobile operating systems or video game consoles that will spur competition and innovation in those respective sectors?

It is an interesting business question, but it also has some policy implications since some might propose laws or regulations to remedy a perceived lack of platform competition in various sectors. After all, many people would answer the above question by saying that there is never such a thing as too much competition. The more platforms the better. But there can be costs associated with too much competition. Let's consider those two case studies mentioned above: mobile operating systems or video game consoles.

Mobile Operating Systems
As my colleague Berin Szoka has pointed out, we are witnessing the rapid proliferation of mobile operating systems, especially on the open source front. So, we've got Apple's iPhone platform, Microsoft's Windows Mobile, Symbian, Google's Android, the LiMo platform, and OpenMoko.

One one hand, all this platform competition sounds great. But as Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal's "Business Tech Blog" points out in a piece today:

Several of us over on the TLF have outlined our reservations about the proposal to allocate a block of the Advanced Wireless Services (AWS) spectrum for a free, nationwide wireless service. (Here's a filing I signed on to that critiques the portion of the plan that requires censorship of the entire band once allocated).

But, strictly from an economic perspective, this is the best overview and critique of the plan I have seen so far: "The Static and Dynamic Inefficiency of Abandoning Unrestricted Auctions for Spectrum," by Bob Hahn, Allan Ingraham, Greg Sidak, and Hal Singer. It's a response to a paper favoring the M2Z plan that was penned by Simon Wilkie of USC, who also formerly served as the Chief Economist of the FCC. (Wilkie's work on behalf of M2Z can be found on the M2Z site here). It's a good debate and I encourage you to look at both papers if you are interested in this issue.

My ongoing media DE-consolidation series represents an effort to set the record straight regarding one of the leading myths about the media marketplace today: the notion that rampant consolidation is taking place and that operators are only growing larger and devouring more and more companies.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the past 3 to 5 years, traditional media operators and sectors have been coming apart at the seams in the face of unprecedented innovation and competition. The volume of divestiture activity has been quite intense, and most traditional media operators have been getting smaller, not bigger. "Traditional media's numbers are shrinking," argued FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell in a recent speech. "The ironic truth is," McDowell continued, that "in many cases, media consolidation has actually become media divestiture. Companies... have been shedding properties to raise capital for new ventures."

And so that trend continues today with the announcement from Cox Enterprises that it will be selling almost all its newspapers. According to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Lately I've been writing about potentially historic upcoming First Amendment case of FCC v. Fox Television Stations. The Supreme Court will hear the case on Tuesday, November 4th. All the briefs in the case are in and can be found on the ABA website here. But I've pasted the links for all of them below as well. In coming days and weeks I might be highlighting some of the comments from the briefs. [The docket number for the case is 07-582]. The amicus brief I filed with my friends at CDT can be found here, and I wrote about it last week here on the TLF.

The FCC v. Fox case is the indecency case involving the FCC's new policy for "fleeting expletives." I wrote about the Second Circuit Court of Appeals decision here. The full decision is here. The FCC v. Fox case could become the most important First Amendment-related Supreme Court case since FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, which just turned 30 years old last month. Anyway, here are all the briefs in the case, starting with the merit briefs by the lead parties:

Catherine Holahan of Business Week points out that consumer and children's advocacy groups are looking to expand their efforts to regulate fatty and sugary food advertising in the name of "protecting the children":

Having successfully lobbied the government to place limits on junk food ads on TV, they now target marketing to kids via the Web. "While there are some rules for TV, there are no rules when you move online," says Patti Miller, vice-president of children's advocacy group Children Now and a member of the Federal Communications Commission's Task Force on Media & Childhood Obesity. "We don't want to reduce junk food advertising to kids [on TV] and then find that it has just moved to another platform."

And so another classic case study in regulatory creep is born and the Net gets a little more regulated in the process as Uncle Sam becomes our Super Nanny. What's that you say? Parents should take more responsibility for what their kids watch and eat? Silly you. Don't you know that it takes a village to raise a village idiot? Or something like that.