Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
The media business in general and punditry in particular are currently seeing an explosion of clever new ways to deliver content. One of the most intriguing is bloggingheads.tv, a “diavlog,” meaning a blog featuring videos of pairs of talking heads. For example, my friend Will Wilkinson had a fascinating discussion with BH.tv founder Robert Wright [...]
I’m a little slow on this, but I’ve finally had a chance to read through Rush Holt’s alternative to the House leadership’s (now shelved) FISA bill, and it’s a real breath of fresh air. It increases executive power in two relatively modest ways: by allowing domestic interception of foreign-to-foreign communications without a warrant and extending [...]
Domain name tasting was on today’s ICANN agenda at the meeting in LA. The GNSO Council, which represents commercial and noncommercial interests, considered this unsavory issue and voted to take a more thorough look at domain name tasting. What is domain name tasting? It refers to an abusive practice in which speculators look for the [...]
Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending a Show-Me Institute conference on education policy. One theme that was echoed by a number of conference participants is that after decades of study, researchers have been unable to quantify what makes a good teacher or a successful school. We know that certain schools, such as KIPP, work [...]
I imagine New York Governor Eliot Spitzer wishes he never stepped in the driver’s license issue. His original decision to use the New York driver’s license as a driver’s license rather than an immigration enforcement tool was correct. But it was met with caterwauls of derision by the virulent anti-immigrant crowd. He backed down and [...]
One of the largest issues to be considered here at the Los Angeles ICANN meeting is about WHOIS. As the AP reports, there are proposals to eliminate the WHOIS database, modify the information process, or call for more studies. Indeed, there’s a lot of people interested in this topic, particularly privacy advocates on the one [...]
Some months ago, I noted that Betzip.com (since rechristened “PurePlay.com”) employs an intriguing legal hack to avoid anti-gambling regulations. It charges its customers a flat monthly fee, which qualifies them to win large prizes for winning online poker games. Non-paying customers can play the same games for free, too—though without qualifying for the largest prizes. [...]
I’ll take Solveig’s recent post about a fishing cat as permission to throw out something having almost no connection to tech policy once in a while. I just watched on my TiVo – there’s my tech angle! – the Newshour debate between Norman Podhoretz and Fareed Zakaria regarding Iran’s efforts to join the nuclear club. [...]
I’m at the ICANN public meeting in Los Angeles this week. This is my first time at ICANN, so I’m going to be giving you my impressions of the whole thing over the next few days. And there are some interesting cultural, privacy and operational issues that will be considered. ICANN will vote on how [...]
As promised, here is the first in a series of posts looking at the usefulness of the FCC website. Others, including Michael Marcus and Cynthia Brumfield, have already catalogued just how much in disrepair the site is. (In fact, our own James Gattuso blogged today about the FCC site, which prompted me to finally kick [...]
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.
