Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I found here a peculiar set of arguments, directed against Solveig the Social Calculator, Solveig the Rampant Utilitarian, Solveig the Anti-Individualist. Who is this Solveig person? Oh, wait, it’s me. I have to wonder if this critique is by the same character who has been going around posting on blogs that I am a defender [...]
Recently, there are reports of more compulsory licensing for 20 more drugs in Thailand; and a conference is announced to celebrate this strategy. Hence this series of links and clips. On April 11, http://www.africasia.com/services/news reported on a plan that seems to implicitly suggest that African states might set aside an array of patents (sorry, no [...]
This from Mike Masnick is absolutely brutal: [Universal Music CEO Doug] Morris is so clueless that he chooses the worst possible analogy to explain his position. Lots of entertainment industry execs have thrown up their hands and ignorantly stated that “you can’t make money from free.” That’s wrong, of course, but Morris takes it one [...]
Honestly, I don’t get it. Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, is mounting a strong challenge for the GOP nomination primarily by appealing to the social conservative wing of the party and religious groups. He uses rhetoric like this on the campaign trail: “Over the past 30 years, a decline in moral [...]
“Information wants to be free,” claim those who decry the overpowering grasp of copyright law. But they cannot mean what they say. Information wants nothing at all. The epigram speaks not to what information wants, but rather to what people want: people want information for free. So restated, the catch-phrase still rings true. Who would [...]
In February, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the following about the REAL ID Act: “If we don’t get it done now, someone is going to be sitting around in three or four years explaining to the next 9/11 Commission why we didn’t do it.” Alice Lipowicz of Washington Technology reported on REAL [...]
Ryan Singel points out even more problems with Joe Klein’s follow-up post on his train wreck of a column: In his two follow-up blog posts, Klein compounds his errors and valiantly argues he is right that the Dems are coddling terrorists because a bill passed by the House says that if the NSA targets a [...]
Scott Cleland over at The Precursor Blog is an ideological ally on many issues, most prominently, network neutrality. Scott has come out strongly against government intervention on a host of issues, but the Google/Doubleclick merger is not one of them. Last week Scott posted a long set of talking points supporting Senators Kohl and Hatch [...]
I had fun just now looking over the Northern Virginia Technology Council’s upcoming dog-and-pony show promoting the REAL ID Act. It’s a big business opportunity for Washington, D.C.-area technology vendors – nevermind that this national ID law is dying because of nationwide disapproval. Why fun? Because clicking on the link to Gold Sponsor Wiley Rein [...]
The most frustrating thing about the Klein fiasco is that I can think of a number of people who actually know a lot about the FISA issue and could have provided Time‘s readership with useful information about the state of the debate. At a minimum, they should be able to find someone who can at [...]
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.
