Keeping politicians' hands off the Net & everything else related to technology
A major new online child safety task report by the “Point Smart. Click Safe.” Blue Ribbon Working Group has just been released. First, some background. In June 2007, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), the principal trade association of the cable industry in the United States, announced “Cable Puts You in Control: PointSmart. ClickSafe.” [...]
Over the July 4 weekend, relatives and friends kept asking me: Which mobile phone should I buy? There are so many choices. I told them I love my iPhone, but all kinds of new devices from BlackBerries and Samsungs to Palm’s new Pre make strong showings, and the less well-known HTC, one of the biggest innovators [...]
The painful issue of cyberbullying has recently taken center stage in the ongoing debate about online child safety. Last week I wrote about Lori Drew’s acquittal on charges related to Megan Meier’s tragic suicide, suggesting that the judge in the case was right to overturn her conviction on a very expansive reading of the federal anti-hacking [...]
Robert Corn-Revere, a partner with the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine and one of America’s greatest living defenders of the First Amendment, has a new essay up on the Media Institute website entitled “The Terminator Cometh.” Corn-Revere takes on the former Terminator himself, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who along with other Calif. lawmakers, has [...]
In April 2008, L. Gordon Crovitz, the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, launched his “Information Age” column with a brilliant piece entitled “Optimism and the Digital World” (which Adam lauded here). Crovitz noted the problem of “information overload,” then creeping into the public consciousness, but was unabashed in his optimism: My own bias is that as [...]
Really, what would we do without European antitrust regulators protecting us from the evils of browser innovation? If Microsoft was allowed to actually bundle its Internet Explorer browser alongside its operating system we might actually do something really crazy… like perhaps try it! After all, the latest browser stats make it pretty clear most of [...]
ReadWriteWeb notes that, after much speculation as to how Twitter would find a business model to support its burgeoning social network, the red-hot start-up is now, finally, showing ads. This anti-climax is almost like Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of the not-so-subtly-named QUEEN, finally revealing that he was gay in 1989: Everybody saw it coming but [...]
Check out “Magic Flute: Primal Find Sings of Music’s Mystery“ in yesterday’s WSJ. The article describes the development of music as a central part of what Jacob Bronowski called the “Ascent of Man“: “I believe that before we evolved language, our communication was more musical than it is now,” says cognitive archaeologist Steven Mithen at the [...]
Come join us for one of our semi-regular happy hours as we celebrate the Digital Revolution (while also denouncing the scourge of centralizing, totalitarian Digital Jacobinism). All those interested in technology, the freedom of technology and technologies of freedom are welcome. We’ll be at the Science Club at 1136 19th St NW, Washington DC from [...]
January 29, 2012
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.
