Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The public policy world lost one of its most colorful personalities yesterday with the death of super-lobbyist Jack Valenti. For 38 years, Valenti was the motion picture industry’s man in Washington, bridging the yawning gap between the worlds of Capitol Hill and the Hollywood hills. He was perhaps the most recognized lobbyist in the country [...]
One advantage the patent system clearly does have over the regulatory state is that you generally can’t go to jail for patent infringement, as you can for selling lobster tails that are the wrong size and packaged in the wrong kind of containers. Over at Ars Technica, I’ve got a story about legislation in Europe [...]
One of my favorite Cato publications back when I was on staff there was Wayne Crews’ Ten Thousand Commandments. Published every year, the report documented the mountains of burdensome regulations that businesses had to comply with that year. He has since moved to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, where he has continued to produce the report. [...]
The past couple years have seen a whole new focus by policymakers on violence in media, from the recent refocusing of the FCC on violent video to the violent video game ban in California. All this implicates what is and ought to be bedrock free speech law. Setting aside the narrow, carefully drawn exceptions for [...]
By all means, let’s consider doing something about television violence. But why don’t we start with the obvious? Digital set-top boxes will allow parents to buy specialty tiers of programming as well as make use of more powerful parental control technologies. Trouble is, not enough families have them. The Federal Communications Commission emphasized this fact [...]
The FCC has just issued its long-awaited report on Violent Television Programming and Its Impact on Children. Unsurprisingly, it recommends that the government should assume a great role in regulating the video content that comes into our homes. The agency concludes that: “We believe that further action to enable viewer-initiated blocking of violent television content [...]
On Monday, the WashingtonWatch.com wiki went “live” – with a lot of promo efforts dedicated to getting it in front of an ever-broader audience. Along with a release out on PR Newswire, it got a friendly write-up on TechCrunch, where Mike Arrington is rubbing his hands together in anticipation of the fun. I’m pleased to [...]
You know what this country needs more of? Patent trolls! This time the target is Microsoft, over its .net software. Jeremy Reimer at Ars is on the story: The patent itself, like many software patents, uses vague language to describe “a system and method for generating computer applications in an arbitrary object framework.” The patent [...]
Over at Ars, I’ve got an analysis of the patents in the Vonage case: The “invention” disclosed by the patent is the concept of applying these “advanced” routing concepts to DNS servers. One of the additional services envisioned by the patent is the ability to translate among domain names, telephone numbers, and IP addresses—clearly essential [...]
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.
