Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
In response to Professor Jonathan Zittrain’s op-ed in The New York Times last Monday about online privacy and open platforms (which Adam thoroughly refuted last week) I have a letter to the editor in today’s The New York Times: To the Editor: Re “Lost in the Cloud” (Op-Ed, July 20): In discussing the privacy risks [...]
The Obama administration has been greeted with enthusiasm by scientists who see the potential for “research-based policy.” Reason, not ideology, will govern. The New Scientist, among other zines, headlines “Let Science Rule: the Rational Way to Run Societies.” (May 28, p. 40-43) This is part of a larger theme: Behavioral economics is taking off.
The latest edition (Version 4.0) of my PFF special report on “Parental Controls and Online Child Protection: A Survey of Tools & Methods” is now up. For those not familiar with the report, it explores the market for parental control tools, rating schemes, education and media literacy efforts, and various other tools, methods, and initiatives [...]
Maine has just enacted a law severely restricting marketing to kids: the Act To Prevent Predatory Marketing Practices against Minors, summarized by Covington & Burling. Adam and I released a major paper in June about such laws: COPPA 2.0: The New Battle over Privacy, Age Verification, Online Safety & Free Speech. Maine is following the lead of several other states [...]
Any time I’ve heard government officials talk about the future of Recovery.gov, I’ve heard them mention maps. Maps that will let you drill down to your neighborhood and see the stimulus spending right around you. Well, the maps were rolled out last Thursday, and there was even a congratulatory press release from Vice President Biden. [...]
The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing yesterday where a number of Senators as well as Julius Genachowski, the new Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, did a lot of fretting about the state of the modern children’s television programming marketplace. According to the Wall Street Journal, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): suggested [...]
From the Portland Press Herald: Wanted: 250 Maine drivers willing to let a stranger put a black box under their dashboard. The reward: $895 and the opportunity to speak their minds about the highway tax experiment to a researcher. University of Iowa researchers are seeking 250 motorists in Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties willing to [...]
Great piece in Wired by Fred Vogelstein asking “Why Is Obama’s Top Antitrust Cop Gunning for Google?” It paints a pretty good picture of the coming antitrust ordeal that Google is likely to be subjected to by the Obama Administration. And, as usual, I couldn’t agree more with the skepticism that Eric Goldman of Santa [...]
Well, here we go again. Harvard’s Jonathan Zittrain has penned another gloomy essay about how “freedom is at risk in the cloud” and the future of the Internet is in peril because nefarious digital schemers like Apple, Facebook, and Google are supposedly out to lock you into their services and take away your digital rights. [...]
May 21, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
