Kenneth Corbin

WASHINGTON — With Congress debating President-elect Obama’s massive economic stimulus package, the IT industry is angling for its share of the roughly $800 billion involved. And by predicting an almost immediate return on taxpayers’ investment, supporters think they make a pretty good case. Here at the National Press Club, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation […]

Rumors about former eBay CEO Meg Whitman’s political ambitions have been kicking around since she handed over the reigns at the online auction house last year. Now that she’s jettisoned her positions on several corporate boards, the speculation has begun again in earnest. This time, the iconic Silicon Valley executive is believed to be eyeing […]

There is an old saw that sunlight is the best disinfectant. It seems a little ironic, then, to blame a law called the Sunshine Act, which was aimed at bringing government proceedings into public view, for creating to the toxic culture that many say pervades the Federal Communications Commission. The three-decade-old law applies to dozens […]

The 111th Congress convenes today, and its first order of business is clear: sending an economic stimulus bill to President-elect Obama’s desk within two weeks of his inauguration. The stimulus package is certain to be a whale of a bill, with hundreds of billions of dollars to be allocated to sectors of the economy in […]

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin Source: Reuters WASHINGTON — Is the Federal Communications Commission broken? That’s the consensus of a long list of opponents who, in the waning days of the Bush administration, have blasted the agency for its slowness, its secrecy and its close ties to corporate interests. But here at the National Press Club […]

Google is reprising its role as the official tracking engine for Santa’s world tour this Christmas Eve. For the second year, the search giant is partnering with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) to provide a real-time Google Maps updated with the location of Pere Noel as he makes his rounds at Noradsanta.org. And, […]

On the eve of a new administration, Washington tech-policy folks are lining up their agendas in anticipation of the next iteration of the Federal Communications Commission. Lawrence Lessig has a different idea: get rid of it. The Stanford University law professor has penned a column for Newsweek arguing that the FCC is so beholden to […]

The Federal Communications Commission may have put itself in sleep mode, but that hasn’t stopped some House Democrats from pressing the agency to move ahead with a plan to build a free, nationwide broadband network. In a recent letter, Reps. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., and Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., both members of the House Subcommittee on Technology […]

The revelation that the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) plans to abandon its longstanding practice of suing individuals for illegally sharing music on the Internet has drawn cautious praise from some of the group’s most vocal critics. But many questions remain unresolved. The details of the plan, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, […]

After several years of enviable sales growth, the online retail sector is poised to wrap up the holiday season with spending essentially flat from last year. According to the latest analysis from online metrics firm comScore, e-commerce spending for the first 49 days of the holiday season was down 1 percent from the same period […]

The bad news for ad sales: it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Barclays analyst Douglas Anmuth submitted the latest discouraging sign today with a revised forecast that anticipates ad revenue declining 10 percent next year, and rebounding slightly with a 1 percent increase in 2010. Anmuth’s latest is a darker picture than […]

The end of the year is a wonderful time for predictions. But instead of looking ahead to 2009, the Pew Internet and American Life Project recently canvassed leading Internet experts for their thoughts on what the digital landscape will look like in 2020. Their predictions: the mobile phone will be the primary device for connecting […]