Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Good article by Tom Hazlett on the Oracle-PeopleSoft case (from the Financial Times): The US government’s antitrust enforcers have been rebuked. In a stinging rejection of the Department of Justice’s lawsuit to block the acquisition of PeopleSoft by Oracle, federal judge Vaughn Walker handed the antitrust division its collective head. While the DOJ alleged that [...]
Interesting article by Robert Robb of the Arizona Republic, who argues that the Rathergate affair will (unfortunately) lead us to more regulation of of the media. Sometimes you can just sense the machinery of the regulatory state shifting into gear.I sense it in what would seem an unlikely event: CBS’ use of forged documents in [...]
Well, just when you think nothing good can come from the other side of the Atlantic, there’s news like this. It looks like Mario Monti, the EU’s outgoing competition commissioner is set to give a “si” to Oracle’s takeover of PeopleSoft. The legal arguments against the merger were always screwy, on either side of the [...]
No one really likes spyware. My own view is that it would be perfectly legitimate for government to ban it. The problem though, is that any legislation would likely inadvertantly hit legitimate activities and–most importantly–private-sector anti-spyware programs will in any case solve the problem far better than government. (Compare my relatively mushy position to that [...]
Just when you thought you had enough to fret about, here’s comes yet another Internet worry: Spam Over Internet Telephony, appealingly acronymed “SPIT.” As reported in MIT’s Technology Review, SPIT is the potential use of VOiP telephone services to send spam via voice mail, rather than via e-mail. Just imagine having hundreds of Viagra ads [...]
If you found this entry thanks to a Web search, you’re probably a perv. Go away! For the rest of you, yesterday the House passed a bill to ban video voyeurism. Because it has already passed the Senate, it is likely to become law. ‘Upskirting’ with little cameras is ugly behavior, and juvenile. So do [...]
Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has introduced an important new bill dealing with the digital television (DTV) transition and the vexing question of how to get the broadcasters to return their old analog spectrum. A hearing on the bill is scheduled for today. The bill proposes a controversial new policy ($1 billion in subsidies for set-top [...]
As part of their continuing effort to censor political speech in America, several “campaign reformers” in Congress have won an important case in the U.S. District Court regarding FEC interpretations of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (“BCRA”). I’m not going to go off on a rant about this disgusting piece of political censorship, but if [...]
‘Anti-spyware’ legislation is being marked up in the Senate Commerce Committee this week. Here are the Top 10 reasons why it’s a dumb idea: The lives of real consumers won’t be any better after it passes. It doesn’t add any protections to existing law. Preempting states prevents state legislators from learning how much harm they’re [...]
Every once and awhile I see or hear something that reminds me just how far removed our society and government now is from the limited government principles of our founding. A front-page story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal on this ridiculous spat over the new Neilsen ratings system quotes Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), who chairs [...]
May 16, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
