Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
As TLF readers may know, I took over in July as Chairman of the Board of the Space Frontier Foundation. As I explained in my recent interview on The Space Show, SFF has been the leading citizens’ advocacy group for space commercialization since 1988. Dedicated to promoting Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill‘s vision of space settlement, as described [...]
Somewhere between Nick Carr’s “Typology of Network Strategies” and Chris Anderson’s “Four Kinds of Free” is the secret to understanding our new economy: Carr’s “Typology of Network Strategies”: Network effect Data mining Digital sharecropping, or “user-generated content” Complements Two-sided markets Economies of scale, economies of scope, and experience Anderson’s “Four Kinds of Free”: Direct cross-subsidy [...]
The Federal Circuit significantly limited the patentability of software and business methods today. Mike Masnick at TechDirt summarizes the holding of the case as follows: the court has said that there’s a two-pronged test to determine whether a software of business method process patent is valid: (1) it is tied to a particular machine or [...]
The Federal Communications Commission began a broad inquiry of intercarrier compensation in 2001 and now it may finally be getting around to acting on it on Nov. 4 while everyone’s thoughts are on something else. This is about 12 years overdue. Congress in 1996 foresaw that implicit phone subsidies were unsustainable and ordered the FCC [...]
Debates about online privacy often seem to assume relatively homogeneous privacy preferences among Internet users. But the reality is that users vary widely, with many people demonstrating that they just don’t care who sees what they do, post or say online. Attitudes vary from application to application, of course, but that’s precisely the point: [...]
I just finished reading through The Economist’s new 14-page special report on cloud computing, “Let It Rise” in which Ludwig Siegele provides an outstanding overview of cloud computing and why it is so important: The rise of the cloud is more than just another platform shift that gets geeks excited. It will undoubtedly transform the [...]
It is commonly believed that intellectual property law in the form of copyright and patent is necessary for innovation and the creation of ideas and inventions such as machines, drugs, computer software, books, music, literature and movies. But Michele Boldrin and his coauthor David K. Levine argue that intellectual property laws are costly and dangerous [...]
< p>The Commerce Department released an interesting paper yesterday on competitiveness and legal costs. It’s conclusion: support U.S. competitiveness by reducing legal costs and uncertainty. At a time when small IT firms are finding it harder to access capital from here at home, they need look far, wide, and global. (earlier this year ACT released [...]
Coincident with the news of a few days ago that Microsoft is embracing the Web even for its longtime PC-centric OS and apps, The Economist has a big special report on “cloud computing,” including articles on: “The Evolution of Data Centres“ “Software as a Service“ “Connecting to the Cloud“ “The Economics of the Cloud“ The [...]
I’m fond of quoting Diane Mermigas, editor-at-large at MediaPost, who is one of the finest media market watchers in the journalism business today. Her latest MediaPost column offers another sobering look at the radical changing sweeping through the media marketplace today. In that article, she notes that even though we are in an era of [...]
May 27, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
