Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
By now, you’ve seen some of his contributions. On behalf of the gang [though it's too late],* I thought I would introduce the newest TLFer, Hance Haney. Hance is Director and Senior Fellow of the Technology & Democracy Project at the Discovery Institute in Washington, D.C. As you’ve already seen, he’s mighty well versed in [...]
I wanted to take a moment to welcome Hance Haney to the Tech Liberation Front blog and introduce TLF readers to our newest contributor. Hance is the director of the Discovery Institute’s “Technology & Democracy” project and a frequent blogger on Discovery’s excellent “Disco-Tech” blog. He’ll be cross-posting many of his Disco-Tech essays here on [...]
Ed Felten points to a Boing Boing post giving details about Microsoft’s decision to drop HD video support from the 32-bit version of Vista. An anonymous Microsoft employee says: Media Player won’t play HD-DVD and Blu-Ray, but you’ll still be able to play them (on XP, even) with third-party programs like WinDVD and PowerDVD, in [...]
The Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission made a significant contribution to understanding the proper role of government in ensuring net neutrality. Speaking at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit this week, Deborah Platt Majoras cited the principle that, absent clear and specific evidence of market failure or consumer harm, policymakers should not enact [...]
Critics claimed broadband access is a duopoly (a market in which there are only two providers) but this is technically inaccurate in much of the country so now the complaint is that 98 per cent of broadband customers receive their service from either the telephone company or the cable company. Even this criticism is irrelevant. [...]
State and local lawmakers learned in the 1990s that large, broad-based tax increases are political losers and that they redistribute taxpayers (to lower taxing jurisdictions) rather than redistributing income. Hence, the growing interest in targeting tax increases to divide taxpayers into smaller groups and minimize voter backlash. Tobacco and alcohol are the favorites, but the [...]
Every week, I look at a software patent that’s been in the news. You can see previous installments in the series here. This week’s patent received extensive publicity this week when a judge slapped a $25 million fine on Microsoft for “misconduct,” including treating the patent holder, z4 Technologies, as “a small and irrelevant company [...]
The TSA has posted a helpful web site detailing what now not allowed on airplanes: We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage. We recognize the sensitivity of the issue and we are reaching out to key women’s medical associations to assist passengers and make information available to them while respecting their [...]
Cory Doctorow points to an article (that’s currently slashdotted) about Microsoft’s plan to disable high-def video playback in 32-bit versions of Windows Vista. It seems that there are too many ways to hack around Microsoft’s copy protection scheme in the 32-bit version, so Microsoft has simply thrown in the towel and told a substantial fraction [...]
Prompted by the good discussion over on my recent ‘Lack of Competition’ Meme post, I’ve just spent some time looking over other posts here on TLF for articulation of why we seem to be so intransigent about net neutrality regulation. I think it’s the consensus among TLFers that regulation is a poor way of getting [...]
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.
