Research Papers
How to Create a More Efficient Broadband Universal Service Program by Incorporating Demand and Cost-Effectiveness Analysis
The existing high-cost fund suffers from two inherent flaws: it does not incorporate how much consumers value the services being subsidized, and does not measure the incremental, rather than average, effects of the program. This paper proposes a way to incorporate those factors into the Connect America Fund�the proposed high-cost broadband support program�to enable it to operate more efficiently than the existing high-cost program ever could.
The Illusory Privacy Problem in Sorrell v. IMS Health
Those in the habit of looking for privacy invasions can find them everywhere. This phenomenon is on display in the recent news coverage of Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc., a case currently under review by the Supreme Court. The litigation challenges a Vermont law that would limit the dissemination and use of prescription drug data for the purposes of marketing to physicians by pharmaceutical companies. The prescription data at issue identify the prescribing physician and pharmacy, but provide only limited detail about the patients (for example, the patient�s age in years and gender). Nevertheless, privacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) have filed amici curiae briefs sounding distress alarms for patient privacy. A recent New York Times article describes the case as one that puts the privacy interests of “little people” against the formidable powers of “Big Data.” The fear is that, in the information age, data subjects could be re-identified using the vast amount of auxiliary information available about each of us in commercial databases and on the internet.
Cloud Computing: Architectural and Policy Implications
Cloud computing has emerged as perhaps the hottest development in information technology. Despite all of the attention it has garnered, existing analyses focus almost exclusively on the issues surrounding data privacy without exploring cloud computing�s architectural and policy implications. This Article offers an initial exploratory analysis in that direction. It begins by introducing key cloud computing concepts, such as service oriented architectures, thin clients, and virtualization, and discusses the leading delivery models and deployment strategies being pursued by cloud computing providers. It then analyzes the economics of cloud computing in terms of reducing costs, transforming capital expenditures into operating expenditures, aggregating demand, increasing reliability, and reducing latency. It then discusses the architectural implications of cloud computing for access networking (focusing on bandwidth, reliability, quality of service, and ubiquity) and data center interconnectivity (focusing on bandwidth, reliability, security and privacy, control over routing policies, standardization, and metering and payment). It closes by offering a few observations on the impact of cloud computing on the industry structure for data centers, server-related technologies, router-based technologies, and access networks, as well as its implications for regulation.