Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Here’s David Levine’s response to the King Kong question: The short response is pretty simple: until they lost the VHS tape case, the only source of revenue for movies was for theatrical releases. Even if DVDs can be freely copied and given away for free, the revenue from theatrical releases can still sustain large scale [...]
Joe at Techdirt weighs in on our alleged need for a “Manhattan project” on alternative energy: Charles Cooper of News.com is upset that on President Bush’s recent trip to Silicon Valley, he didn’t speak with more substance on how technology could help ease our energy problems. Specifically, Cooper would have liked to see Bush call [...]
As expected, last night’s TLF happy hour was a tremendous success. Dubbed Alcohol Liberation Front, it saw the largest convergence of TLF bloggers ever in a single location. Not only that, but the event saw a record number of TLF readers attending to join in convivial, spirited conversation – not to mention a teeming crowd [...]
David Levine writes to tell me about his blog, which is on the same theme as his book: abolishing patents and copyrights. Although I wasn’t persuaded by his talk, I thought it was an interesting and provocative presentation, and I’m looking forward to reading his blog and his book more carefully to consider his arguments [...]
Matthew Yglesias weighs in on my recent post concerning Levine’s talk: Strengthening copyright protections does two things. On the one hand, it increases the incentives for creating new works because it makes it easier to make more money off of them. On the other hand, it increases the costs of creating new works because it [...]
There’s an interesting story on B1 of today’s Wall Street Journal about cellular companies establishing very restrictive standards for wireless media content transmitted over their devices. I have yet to see the final guidelines that the Journal gained access to, but it sounds like Verizon, Cingular, Sprint and others will be imposing some very stringent [...]
Technology Daily (subscription) reports that several conservative groups blasted Senate leaders Tuesday for not acting on legislation to increase broadcast indecency fines, and “failing to deliver an issue to values-oriented Republican voters”. Said Amanda Banks of Focus on the Family: “[t]here is no reason why in 2006, just months before this Congress is going to [...]
It’s day 4 of the Microsoft European hearing and today the Judges asked some really great questions about interoperability. Judge Cooke, whose Irish accent comes and goes, really cut through the blather on both sides of the argument and got to the core of the issue. The basic issue is that in 2000, Microsoft figured [...]
The first panel of yesterday’s Cato conference focused on Against Intellectual Monopoly, a treatise against patent and copyright law. One of the authors, David LeVine, faced off against James DeLong of the Progress and Freedom Foundation, with Cato’s Jim Harper providing some theoretical background at the outset. I wanted to be convinced by Mr. LeVine’s [...]
May 25, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
