Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Three Cheers for Sen. Norm Coleman! He recently introduced a Sense of the Senate resolution “to protect the U.S.’s historic role in overseeing the operations of the Internet from an effort to transfer control over the unprecedented communications and informational medium to the U.N.” In his statement, Sen. Coleman argued that: “There is no rational [...]
The complaint in the case of McGraw-Hill v. Google is available on FindLaw. The most interesting paragraph, in my opinion, is this one: Google purports to justify its systematic copying of entire books on the ground that it is a necessary step to making them available for searching through www.google.com, where excerpts from the books [...]
Walt Mossberg has a great column criticizing digital rights management technology. He gets the fundamental point that DRM harms consumers by needlessly restricting how, when, and where they can consume content they have legally purchased: I believe that consumers should have broad leeway to use legally purchased music and video for personal, noncommercial purposes in [...]
Citizens Against Government Waste has issued a report on the Real ID Act. This is a welcome look at Real ID. It’s known by civil libertarians as a dramatic step forward for our national ID system, but CAGW points out that it will also be a huge expense, costing the average driver around $90. Would [...]
Last minute addition to the schedule for tomorrow’s event at Heritage on digital television: Ken Ferree, former FCC media bureau chief, and–until last week–COO of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Ferree led the Commission’s DTV efforts during the Powell era, and is known for his outspoken views (of broadcasters: “They’d rather eat their children than [...]
New paper just out today from Heritage on the DTV transition, looking ahead to next week’s Senate vote on setting a “hard date” for the end of analog…. Since the days of Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle, television has been broadcast using the same technology and largely over the same frequencies. That is about to [...]
By now you’ve heard that Apple is launching a video-capable version of its wildly popular iPod. Apple is a real trailblazer, obviously, when it comes to innovative mobile media applications, but they’re not the only one. For example, take a look at EchoStar’s incredible new application, the “Pocket DISH.” The PocketDISH allows consumers to access [...]
After reading James DeLong’s defense of Patrick Ross’s CNET article on the DMCA, I have to admit that I was being unfair to call the article “incredibly confused.” I interpreted Patrick to be saying that the DMCA literally allows consumers to break contracts they’ve made with content providers. But after reading DeLong’s defense, it’s clear [...]
If you find nothing on TV to watch next Wednesday afternoon, those of you in the DC area may want to come down to The Heritage Foundation at 12:30 for what should be an interesting discussion of the transition to digital television. WIth Congress planning to move legislation on key DTV issues–a hard date for [...]
What’s the best way to savage the U.N., E.U., etc.? With humor. Over on CircleID, there’s a great post illustrating the combined hubris and stupidity of the European bureaucrats who are making a project of ‘Internet governance.’ (The phrase ‘Internet governance’ can only be put in single quotes because it’s nonsensical. The Internet is not [...]
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.
