Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
I’ve been thinking a fair amount about software patents the last couple of weeks. I recently attended a Brookings Institution conference that focused pretty heavily on software patents, and since then I’ve interviewed several sharp patent scholars in preparation for a forthcoming article. In those conversations, I noticed the same cultural gulf I blogged about [...]
I can’t believe we’re actually asking whether Obama—the candidate who promised to bring the Federal government (and perhaps everyone else) into the Web 2.0 era whether they like it or not—will have a “personal computer.” The “webiness” of Obama’s predecessors is just embarrassing: Clinton famously sent only two e-mails while he was president, one to test [...]
Those who criticize Google as a “monopoly” usually focus on the search and advertising markets. Google may indeed have a huge lead in those markets, but it is by no means a “monopoly” in the strict sense of the word as the only (“mono-”) seller in that market. If the critics are concerned about about [...]
Digital video recorders (DVRs) may turn out to be the “last gasp” of cable, satellite and other traditional multichannel subscription video providers. If users can get the same basic functionality (on demand viewing of the shows they want) over the Internet for free or paying for each show rather than a hefty monthly subscription, Who Needs [...]
Some sensible thinking here about broadband pork stimulus plans from Saul Hansell of the New York Times. In his piece on the NYT Bits blog this week, “Does Broadband Need a Stimulus?” he argues that people should stop grumbling about the “relatively small sum” of $6 billion that the new administration has proposed for wiring [...]
Many folks are discussing Christopher Ferguson’s latest paper on “The School Shooting / Violent Video Game Link: Causal Relationship or Moral Panic?” And with good reason. It’s an important look at how “moral panics” develop in modern society, in this case around video games. [Moral panics is a subject I have written on at length [...]
Chris Soghoian called out a problem and now takes credit for a fix to the way the Whitehouse.gov Web site delivered third-party cookies – specifically YouTube cookies. The use of YouTube videos on the President’s site is a Web 2.0-ish improvement, which is welcome, but embedding videos meant that YouTube was placing cookies on the [...]
Sun Chairman Scott McNealy seemingly wants to shine some light on the benefits of software that is open sourced, but by advocating government mandates he’s calling for the specter of regulatory darkness. Here’s a quote from him in a BBC article: “The government ought to mandate open source products based on open source reference implementations [...]
Tech policy aficionados should by now be familiar with efforts to reform the patent system. Issues range from fixing the poor quality of granted patents to instituting post-grant review procedural reforms. What you don’t hear much about are efforts to educate judges on patents. Because no matter how much patent law is reformed to increase [...]
January 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.
