Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
Jerry Yang’s departure as Yahoo! CEO opens the door to a renewed bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo!’s search business (or Yahoo! itself). Such a merger could produce a significantly stronger challenger to Google in the search market. With this possibility in mind, the WSJ just ran a fascinating history of the “paid search” business—the placement [...]
As Berin and I have noted here before (here and here), there seems to be no shortage of competition and innovation in the mobile operating system (OS) space. We’ve got: Apple’s iPhone platform, Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, Symbian, Google’s Android, BlackBerry, Palm OS (+ Palm’s new WebOS), the LiMo platform, and OpenMoko. I am missing any? [...]
In early December, Jerry Brito asked whether Obama’s proposal to create the post of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) should be feared or welcomed: I think the question turns on whether this person will be CTO of the United States or CTO of the U.S. Federal Government. While I personally believe the former should be feared, [...]
Gamepolitics.com reports on a new South Carolina bill that proposes to outlaw public profanity. The measure, S. 56, stipulates that: It is unlawful for a person in a public forum or place of public accommodation wilfully and knowingly to publish orally or in writing, exhibit, or otherwise make available material containing words, language, or actions [...]
It has been suggested that the American wireless market is a “textbook oligopoly” in which the four national carriers have little incentive to innovate or further reduce prices. I’m more sympathetic to this argument than some libertarians, but over at Techdirt Carlo offers some evidence that competition is alive and well in the wireless marketplace. [...]
The Internet Safety Technical Task Force (ISTTF), which was formed a year ago to study online safety concerns and technologies, today issued its final report to the U.S. Attorneys General who authorized its creation. It was a great honor for me to serve as a member of the ISTTF and I believe this Task Force [...]
President-elect Obama intends to appoint Julius Genachowski, a protege of former FCC chairman Reed Hundt, as the commission’s next chairman. Having been at the FCC with Hundt, Genachowski should have seen industries largely ignored by the commission — cable and wireless — thrive as a result of deregulation while the telephone industry it attempted to reinvent [...]
I’ve been working closely with PFF’s new Adjunct Fellow Michael Palage on ICANN issues. Here is his latest note, from the PFF blog. ICANN recently proclaimed that the “Joint Project Agreement” (one of two contractual arrangements that ICANN has with the U.S. Department of Commerce (DoC) governing ICANN’s operations) will come to an end in [...]
I haven’t been blogging much lately because, along with my PFF colleagues Berin Szoka and Adam Marcus, I’m working on a lengthy paper about the importance of Section 230 to Internet freedom. Section 230 is the sometimes-forgotten portion of the Communications Decency Act of 1996 that shielded Internet Service Providers (ISP) from liability for information [...]
Apple has announced it will be dropping DRM, completing the transition from its DRM-Free-For-a-Fee model to one where DRM music isn’t an option. As Ars reports, it’ll take until August to see all DRM’d content leave the iTunes store. This seems to be the final stage in a trasition that started in February of 2007. [...]
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.
