Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
EFF reports that a California appeals court has thrown out Apple’s demands for Apple Insider and PowerPage to disclose their sources. As I wrote last year about a different but closely related case, I think it’s a little bit strange that mainstream media reports are describing these as “blogger” cases: Yet upon closer examination, it’s [...]
Kevin Drum takes Matt Yglesias to task for suggesting that network neutrality might be new regulations rather than the simple continuation of existing regulations: The 1996 Telecommunications Act defined two different types of service, information services (IS) and telecommunications services (TS), and cable companies were originally classified as IS and telephone companies as TS. Although [...]
We mostly focus on computer technology here at TLF, but there are other types of technologies that are arguably more important. For all my railing against the DMCA, I have to concede that, as far as I know, it’s never gotten anybody killed. The same can’t be said, unfortunately, of our organ-donation system. AEI’s Sally [...]
Last month, Corey Doctorow pointed out that by the RIAA’s reckoning, President Bush is a music thief. As part of the DMCA rule-making proceedings, the RIAA said that ripping a CD to your portable music player without authorization is against the law. And since the Beatles haven’t allowed their music on Apple’s iTunes Music Store, [...]
My old roomie Julian Sanchez and my friend Matt Yglesias go at it over neutrality regulation on Bloggignheads.tv. If you haven’t seen it yet, Bloggingheads.tv is (as its name implies) a site featuring popular bloggers debating the issues of the day on camera. My favorite thing about the Sanchez/Yglesias spot was the fact that Julian [...]
David Berlind defends himself against critics who argue he’s selling us out by endorsing efforts like DReaM: Here on ZDNet, and in email, I’ve been taking some heat for my idealism, or in this case, my lack thereof, when it comes to DRM: er: CRAP. Follow this thread for an example. Some readers would rather [...]
At today’s Judiciary Committee mark-up session, Chairman James Sensenbrenner contributed a new and quite imaginative argument as to why neutrality regulation is ok: its not regulation at all. It–at least the Judiciary Committee’s version–is simply good old fashioned antitrust. Specifically he said: Opponents of this legislation have sought to portray efforts to provide a meaningful [...]
Nick Carr pronounces the death of Wikipedia. Well, that’s what he suggests in his attention-grabbing headline. What he’s really talking about is the alleged end of Wikipedia as an open encyclopedia: There was a time when, indeed, pretty much anyone could edit pretty much anything on Wikipedia. But, as eWeek’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols recently observed, “Wikipedia [...]
Seven Hollywood studios and TV networks are suing Cablevision over its new network DVR service. To a consumer, the service is just like TiVo in that they choose programs to record and watch at a later time. The difference is that there is no set-top DVR on the consumer’s premises; it’s all recorded at Cablevision’s [...]
Every reporter loves a “man bites dog” story, something that’s out of the ordinary, a reversal of the norm. Especially so when the subject is something as abstuse to the average reader as, to give a random example, Internet regulation. Add in the opportunity to use the term “strange bedfellow” and you’ve got an irresisitible [...]
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.
