Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In an attempt to explain the effect of market growth on copyright policy, I earlier told a parable, promising graphs to follow. In the meantime, I’ve drafted an entire paper on the topic, Outgrowing Copyright: The Effect of Market Size on Copyright Policy [PDF]. You can find the graphs describing the parable—actually, modified version of [...]
Verizon originally rejected Naral text messages, as Tim notes below, but it quickly changed its tune when the news became public. That’s because there is competition in the marketplace and public pressure made Verizon act faster that it probably has on any other issue in the last year. This is one more example of why [...]
A reader writes in to point out Ken Fisher’s excellent take on the Verizon/NARAL controversy: When first reported by the New York Times last night, the issue was tied to “net neutrality,” but this is really a red herring. Laws prevent Verizon from censoring voice calls or even individual emails, but there are no prohibitions [...]
In an excellent post, Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has picked up and expanded on my post here about the ITAA’s advocacy in favor of REAL ID. His title “Conflicts of Interest: . . .” draws out nicely the schism that ITAA’s advocacy for REAL ID creates for its membership. They work to serve us when [...]
Laruen Weinstein has posted a proposal for the deployment of a distributed global Internet traffic measurement system. Aimed at moving past the current impasse over whether their should be government regulation aimed at network neutrality, the system would measure “operational bandwidth, throughput, and other parameters of public Internet traffic” so that norms could be established [...]
Last week, the European Court of First Instance sided with the European Commission against Microsoft in an important competition case. Jonathan Zuck of ACT join TLF regulars to discuss the case.
In his latest FT.com article, Tom Hazlett, professor of law and economics at George Mason University, points out that despite all the talk about the need for mandatory “openness” or wireless Net neutrality, Apple’s “walled garden” i-Phone model has spawned some serious innovation. He argues: “One million customers bought iPhones in the first 79 days; [...]
Here’s an essay that (based on the abstract, at least, I haven’t had a chance to read the whole paper) perfectly crystalizes the anti-libertarian premises at the heart of the copyright maximalist position: The adaptation to the Internet economy of intellectual property law in general, and copyright law in particular, is at the center of [...]
Building on what Braden said yesterday about education being the key to online safety… I just released a short new paper about “Two Sensible, Education-Based Legislative Approaches to Online Child Safety.” The paper focuses on S. 1965, the “Protecting Children in the 21st Century Act,” and H.R. 3461, the “Safeguarding America’s Families by Enhancing and [...]
CEI has recently brought on a very productive Research Associate named Alex Nowrasteh who has posted a great piece about the Google/DoubleClick merger and the hearings on Capitol Hill today on CEI’s blog, OpenMarket.org. The merger received a one-two punch from Sen. Herb Kohl Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill), Chairman of the Congressional Subcommittee on Commerce, [...]
February 13, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
