Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I’ve got a new article in the Hearland Institute’s IT&T News about the NSA’s spying programs: An even bigger issue with mass surveillance by software is the way it would transform the principle of judicial oversight. Under current law, law enforcement officials must request a warrant from a judge for each suspect they wish to [...]
Check out this ad I saw earlier today on Freedom to Tinker: Do the doctrines of contributory and vicarious liability apply to the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions? If so, I bet the RIAA and MPAA’s lawyers are drafting up the lawsuit as we speak!
I have to admit that my reaction to the idea of inviting a scholar from the Discovery Institute to participate on TLF was pretty similar to those of the majority of our readers. The Discovery Institute’s intelligent design shop has a well-deserved reputation for peddling pernicious nonsense. See here for an excellent summary by Daniel [...]
Want to read about a market-based institution that can improve on copyrights and patents? Check out my paper, “Prediction Markets for Promoting the Progress of Sciences and the Useful Arts,” 14 George Mason Law Review __ (2006) (forthcoming). You can download a copy here. The abstract: Copyrights and patents promote only superficial progress in the [...]
I realize this is not a gadget blog, and that I probably should not be using it to seek out personal advice but… I’m about to upgrade my cell phone and to get one with better multi-media capabilities, especially so I can avoid carrying around both a cell phone and my MP3 player everywhere I [...]
Oh brother, I have heard some pretty silly censorship tales in my time, but this one is a real doozy. Last week, U.K. telecom and media regulator Ofcom announced that, in the wake of an investigation prompted by the anonymous viewer’s complaint, it had pressured the children’s cable TV channel Boomerang to edit out scenes [...]
There were many excellent keynote speeches and panel discussions during last week’s annual PFF Aspen Summit, and the videos for most of them can now be found online here. But I thought that TLF readers might be particularly interested in the very entertaining net neutrality debate that took place there. It featured the following cast [...]
In case you didn’t hear, Democratic FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein made some provocative remarks last week at PFF’s annual Aspen Summit, especially on the subject of broadcast indecency enforcement. In his speech, Adelstein had some very interesting things to say about the debates over a la carte regulation and multi-cast must carry mandates (both of [...]
The current Cato Unbound, Mexicans in America, is the usual provocative and wide-ranging fare. There’s no lack of issues – or passion – in the debate about immigration. One item in the current discussion that piques my interest – indeed, concerns me - is the formative consensus that “internal enforcement” of the immigration laws is a good [...]
I’ve been sick as a dog and stuck in bed for several days now and just now had the energy to get back in front of my computer and catch up with the blog. And I must say, what I’m reading here in response to Hance Haney’s arrival at the TLF makes me sick in [...]
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.
